CHAPTER III.

Within a week or two after, one afternoon Mrs. Kitty Sherrard made her appearance at Barn Elms, with a great project in hand. She meant to give a party.

Party-giving was Mrs. Sherrard's idiosyncrasy. According to the usual system in Virginia, during the lifetime of the late Mr. Sherrard, there was much frolicking, dancing, and hilarity at Turkey Thicket, the Sherrard place, and a corresponding narrowness of income and general behindhandedness. But since Mr. Sherrard's death Mrs. Sherrard, along with the unvarying and sublime confidence in her husband, dead or alive, that characterizes Virginia women, had yet entirely abandoned Mr. Sherrard's methods. The mortgage on Turkey Thicket had been paid off, the whole place farmed on common-sense principles, and the debts declared inevitable by Mr. Sherrard carefully avoided. As a matter of fact, the only people in the county who paid their taxes promptly were the widows, who nevertheless continually lamented that they were deprived of the great industry, foresight, and business capacity of their defunct lords and masters. Mrs. Sherrard gave as many parties in Mr. Sherrard's lifetime as she did after his death; but, since that melancholy event, the parties were paid for, not charged on account.

When this startling information about the coming festivity was imparted, Jacqueline, who was sitting in her own low chair by the fire, gave a little jump.

"And," said Mrs. Sherrard, who was a courageous person, "I'll tell you what I am giving it for. It is to get the county people to meet George Throckmorton. Not a human being in the county has called on him, except Edmund Morford, and I fairly drove him to it. He began some of his long-winded explanations. 'Aunt Kitty,' he said, 'what am I, even though I be a minister of the gospel, that I should set myself up against the spirit of the community, which is against recognizing Throckmorton?' 'What are you, indeed, my dear boy,' I answered. 'I'm not urging you to go, because it's a matter of the slightest consequence what you do or what you don't, but merely for your own sake, because it is illiberal and unchristian of you not to go.' Now, Edmund is a good soul, for all his nonsense."

Mrs. Temple was horrified at this way of speaking of the young rector.

"And I've intimated to him that I'm about to make my will--I haven't the slightest notion of doing it for the next twenty years--but the mere hint always brings Edmund to terms, and so he went over to Millenbeck to call. He came back perfectly delighted. The house is charming, Throckmorton is a prince of hospitality, and I don't suppose poor Edmund ever was treated with so much consideration by a man of sense in his life before." Mrs. Temple groaned, but Mrs. Sherrard kept on, cutting her eye at Judith, who was the only person at Barn Elms that knew a joke when she saw it. Judith bent over her work, laughing. "I met Throckmorton in the road next day. 'So you dragooned the parson into calling on the Philistine,' he said. Of course I tried to deny it, after a fashion; but Throckmorton won't be humbugged--can't be, in fact--and I had to own up. 'You can't say Edmund's not a gentleman,' said I, 'and he is the most good-natured poor soul; and if he had broken his nose, or got cross-eyed in early youth, he really would have cut quite a respectable figure in the world.' 'That's true,' answered George, laughing, and looking so like he did long years ago, 'but you'll admit, Mrs. Sherrard, that he is too infernally handsome for his own good.' 'Decidedly,' said I."

"Katharine Sherrard," solemnly began Mrs. Temple, who habitually called Mrs. Sherrard Kitty, except at weddings and funerals, and upon occasions like the present, when her feelings were wrought up, "the way you talk about Edmund Morford is a grief and a sorrow to me. He is a clergyman of our church, and it is not becoming for women to deride the men of their own blood. Men must rule, Katharine Sherrard. It is so ordered by the divine law."

"Jane Temple," answered Mrs. Sherrard, "you may add by the human law, too; but some women--"

"Set both at naught," answered Mrs. Temple, piously and sweetly.

"They do, indeed," fervently responded Mrs. Sherrard, having in view General Temple's complete subjugation. "But now about the party. The general must come, of course. I wish I could persuade you."

"I have not been to a party since before the war, and now I shall never go to another one."

"But Judith and Jacqueline will come."

At this a deep flush rose in Judith's face.

"I don't go to parties, Mrs. Sherrard."

"I know; but you must come to this one."

Mrs. Temple set her lips and said nothing, but Jacqueline, who sometimes asserted herself at unlooked-for times, spoke up:

"If Judith doesn't go, I--I--sha'n't go."

"You hear that?" asked Mrs. Sherrard, delighted at Jacqueline's spirit. "Stick to it, child; there is no reason why Judith shouldn't come."

Here General Temple entered and greeted Mrs. Sherrard elaborately. Mrs. Sherrard immediately set to work on the general. She knew perfectly well that he could do no more in the case than Simon Peter could, but she poured her fire into him, thinking a stray shot might hit Mrs. Temple. Judith remained quite silent. She was too sincere of soul to say she did not want to go; and yet going to parties was quite out of that life of true widowhood she had laid down for herself; and life was intolerably dull. She loved gayety and brightness, and her whole life was clothed with somberness. She was full of ideas, and loved books, and nobody in the house ever read a line except General Temple, and his reading was confined to the science of war, for which he would certainly never have any use. She was full of quick turns of repartee, that, when she indulged them, almost frightened Mrs. Temple, who had the average woman's incapacity for humor. Mrs. Sherrard and herself were great friends--and friends were not too plentiful with Mrs. Sherrard, whose tongue was a two-edged sword. Nevertheless, Mrs. Temple and Mrs. Sherrard had been intimate all their lives, and Mrs. Sherrard was one of the few persons who ever took liberties with Mrs. Temple. Mrs. Sherrard was clear-sighted, and she knew what nobody else did--how starved and blighted was Judith's life by that stern repression to which she had set herself; and she had known Beverley Temple, too, and sometimes said to herself: "Perhaps it is better for Judith as it is, for Beverley, brave and handsome as he was, yet was a dreadfully ordinary fellow. Luckily, she was hustled into marrying him so quickly, and she was so young, she didn't find it out; but if he had lived--"

Mrs. Sherrard departed, impressing upon General Temple that she should certainly expect to see him at the party, with Judith and Jacqueline. Simon Peter in the kitchen reported the state of affairs to Delilah, who remarked:

"Miss Kitty She'ard, she know Miss Judy cyan go twell ole mistis say so. Ole marse, he got a heap o' flourishes an' he talk mighty big, but mistis she doan' flourish none; she jes' go 'long quiet like, an' has her way."

"Dat's so," answered Simon Peter, rubbing his woolly head with an air of conviction. "Mistis su't'ny is de wheel-hoss in dis heah team."

"An' ain' de womenfolks allus de wheel-hosses? Ole marse he set up an' he talk 'bout de weather an' de craps, an' he specks de 'lection gwine discomfuse things, an' he read de paper an' he know more 'n de paper do, an' he read de Bible an' he know more 'n de Bible do, an' all de time he ain' got de sperrit uv a chicken."

"De womenfolks kin mos' in gen'ally git dey way," cautiously answered Simon Peter.

"Yes, dey kin; an' dey is gwine ter, 'long as menfolks is so triflin' an' owdacious as dey is."

Jacqueline developed a strange obstinacy about the party. She declared she was dying to go, but she never wavered from her determination not to go without Judith.

"But your sister does not wish to go, Jacqueline," her mother said to this.

"But I want her to go, mamma. You can't imagine how I _long_ to go to this party. It is so very, very dull at Barn Elms--and I have my new white frock."

"Judith has no frock."

"Oh, yes she has. She has that long black dress, in which she looks so nice, and she is so clever at sewing she could cut it open at the neck and turn up the sleeves at the elbow."

Mrs. Temple said nothing more. Jacqueline went about, eager-eyed, but silent, and possessed of but one idea--the party. A day or two after this she said bitterly to her mother, when Judith was out of the room:

"Mamma, I know why you are willing to disappoint me about this party. It is because you love your dead child better than your living one."

Mrs. Temple turned a little pale. The thrust went home, as some of Jacqueline's thrusts did.

"And if I don't go, I will cry and cry--I will cry that night so loud in my room that papa will come in, and you know how it vexes him to have me cry; and it will break my heart--I know it will."

Mrs. Temple went about all day with Jacqueline's words ringing in her ears. That night, after Jacqueline was in bed, her mother went into the room. It was a large, old-fashioned room, and Jacqueline's little white figure, as she sat up in bed, was almost lost in the huge four-poster, with dimity curtains and valance. The fire still smoldered, and the spindle-shanked dressing-table, with the glass set in its mahogany frame, cast unearthly shadows on the floor in the half-light. Mrs. Temple sat down by the bed. Something like remorse came into the mother's heart. This child was the least loved by both father and mother. Jacqueline began at once, in her sweet, nervous voice:

"Mamma, I have been thinking about the party."

"So have I, child."

"And may we go?"

Mrs. Temple paused before she spoke.

"Yes, you and Judith may go," she said presently in a stern voice--ah! the sternness of these gentle women!

Jacqueline held out her arms fondly to her mother, but Mrs. Temple could not be magnanimous in defeat. She went out, softly closing the door behind her, without giving Jacqueline her good-night kiss, but Jacqueline called after her in a voice tremulous with gratitude and delight, "Dear, sweet mamma!"

The moment she heard the "charmber-do'," as the negroes called it, shut down-stairs, Jacqueline slipped out of bed and flew across the dark passage into Judith's room to tell the wonderful news. Judith was sitting before the fire, holding her sleeping child in her arms. The boy had waked and had clung to his mother until she lifted him out of his little bed. He had gone to sleep directly, but Judith held him close; he was so little, so babyish, yet so soft and warm and clinging.

"We are going to the party, Judith," said Jacqueline, excitedly, kneeling down by her.

"Are we?" answered Judith. A gleam came into her eyes very like Jacqueline's.

"And--and--" continued Jacqueline with a sly, half-laughing glance, "we will meet Major Throckmorton again."

"Go to bed, Jacqueline," replied Judith in the soft, composed voice that invariably crushed Jacqueline.

Next morning General Temple showed the most unqualified delight at Mrs. Temple's capitulation. He considered it becoming, though, to make some slight protest against going to the party. He thought, perhaps, with his tendency to gout, it would scarcely be prudent to expose himself to the night air, and--er--to Kitty Sherrard's chicken salad; and, besides, he really was not justified in postponing the drawings of some maps to illustrate the position of Temple's Brigade at the battle of Chancellorsville; for, like all other dilettanti, General Temple's work was always of present importance and admitted of no delay whatever.

Mrs. Temple did not smile at this, but treated it with great seriousness.

"Quite true, my dear; but now that I have promised Jacqueline, I can not disappoint her. You must go for her sake."

"Rather let me say, my dear Jane, that I go for your sake--your wishes, my love, being of paramount importance."

For a henpecked man, it was impossible to be more imposing or agreeable than General Temple. So on the night of the party he was promptly on hand, at eight o'clock, in his old-fashioned evening coat, the tails lined with white satin, and wearing a pair of large, white kid gloves.

Jacqueline and Judith soon appeared. Jacqueline, in her new white frock, looked her prettiest, albeit it showed her youthful thinness and all her half-grown angles. Judith's beauty was of a sort that could stand the simplicity of her black gown that revealed her white neck, and, for the first time since her widowhood, she wore no cap over her red-brown hair. Delilah and Simon Peter yah-yahed and ki-yied over both of them.

"Dem little foots o' Miss Jacky's in de silk stockin's ain' no bigger 'n little Beverley's, hardly, and Miss Judy she look like de Queen o' Sheba," delightedly remarked Delilah.

Judith could scarcely meet Mrs. Temple's eyes. She felt inexplicably guilty. Mrs. Temple examined them critically, though, and the general was loftily complimentary.

"And, Delilah," said Judith, gathering up her gloves nervously, "be sure and look after Beverley. He has never been left alone in his life before."

"I will look after Beverley, Judith," said Mrs. Temple, and Judith blushed faintly at something in the tone.

All the way, going along the country road in the moonlight, Judith could feel Jacqueline's little feet moving restlessly with excitement. As they drove up to the house, and caught glimpses through the open hall-door of the dancers and heard the sound of music, Jacqueline began to bob up and down with childish delight.

Like most Virginia country-houses, Turkey Thicket had an immense entrance hall, which was not heated and was of no earthly use the best part of the year, and for which all the rooms around it were unnecessarily cramped. Mrs. Sherrard's hall was of more use to her than most people's, owing to her party-giving proclivities, and was brightly lighted up for dancing. As Judith came down the broad stairs on General Temple's arm, a kind of thrill of surprise went around among the guests. Nobody expected to see her. Many of them had never seen her except in her widow's veil and cap. Judith, remembering this, could not restrain a blushing consciousness that made her not less handsome; and, besides, her good looks were always full of surprises. One never knew whether she would be simply pale and pretty, or whether she would blaze out into a sudden and captivating beauty.

They made their way through the dancers, Jacqueline alternately pale and red with excitement, and the general bowing right and left, until they entered the small, old-fashioned drawing-room. Mrs. Sherrard, in a plain black silk, but with a diamond comb in her white hair and a general air of superbness, was delighted to see Judith. It was a victory over Jane Temple. She detained her for a moment to whisper: "My dear, I am dreadfully afraid I shall make a failure in trying to get George Throckmorton accepted here. The girls, who most of them never saw so fine a man before, will hardly have a word to say to him; the men are a little better, but it isn't a pronounced success by any means. I have been longing for you to come. You have so much more sense than any of the young people I know, I thought you would be a little less freezing to him."

At this a warmer color surged into Judith's cheeks. She could not remember ever to have seen a man who impressed her so instantly as Throckmorton. With her clear, feminine instinct, she had seen at the first glance what manner of man he was. As Mrs. Sherrard spoke to her, she turned and saw him standing by the fireplace, talking with Edmund Morford. Throckmorton could not have desired a better foil than the young clergyman, with his faultless red and white skin, his curling dark hair, his mouth full of perfect teeth, and his character as a clerical dandy written all over him. Throckmorton, whose good looks were purely masculine and characteristic, looked even more manly and soldierly by contrast. Both men caught sight of Judith at the same moment. Morford was thrown into a perfect flutter. He wondered if Judith had put on that square-necked, short-sleeved black gown to do him a mischief. Throckmorton, obeying a look from Mrs. Sherrard, came forward and was formally introduced. Judith offered her hand, after the Virginia custom, which Throckmorton bowed over.

"Mrs. Temple did not present me to you on Sunday," he said, with a smile and a slight flush; "but I guessed very readily who you were."

Judith, too, colored.

"Poor mother, you must not take her too hardly. You know how good she is, but--but she is very determined; she moves slowly."

"Yes," replied Throckmorton, with his easy, man-of-the-world manner; "but I am afraid there are others as unyielding as Mrs. Temple, and not half so kindly--for she is a dear soul! It seemed to me the carrying out of a sort of dream to come back to Millenbeck. My boy Jack--that young fellow yonder--looks rather old to be my son, don't you think?"

"Y-e-s," answered Judith, with provoking dubiousness and a wicked little smile.

"Oh, you are really too bad! I am very tired of explaining to people that Jack is nothing like as old as he looks. Well, the boy, although brought up at army posts, rather wanted to be a Virginian, and to own the old place; you know that sort of thing always crops out in a Virginian."

"Yes," smiled Judith; "I see how it crops out in _you_. You are immensely proud of being a Throckmorton, and you would rather own Millenbeck, if it were tumbling down about your ears, than the finest place in the world anywhere else."

"Now, Mrs. Beverley," said Throckmorton, determinedly, "I can't have my weaknesses picked out in this prompt and savage manner. I own I am a fool about Millenbeck, but I'd have sworn that nobody but myself knew it. I've got a year's leave, and I've come down here with Sweeney, an old ex-sergeant of mine, who has owned me for several years, and my old horse Tartar, that is turned out to grass; and if I like it as well as I expect, I may resign"--Throckmorton was always talking about resigning, as Mrs. Sherrard was about making her will, without the slightest idea of doing it--"and turn myself out to grass like Tartar. But my reception hasn't been--a--exactly--cordial--or--"

"I am sorry you have been disappointed," said Judith, gently; "but it seems to me that we are all in a dreadful sort of transition state now. We are holding on desperately to our old moorings, although they are slipping away; but I suppose we shall have to face a new existence some time."

"I think I understand the feeling here--even that dead wall of prejudice that meets me. One look around Severn church, last Sunday, would have told me that those people had gone through with some frightful crisis. I thought, perhaps being one of their own county people originally might soften them toward me, but I believe that makes me blacker than ever."

Judith could not deny it.

Throckmorton, who was worldly wise, read Judith at a glance, besides having learned her history since first seeing her. He saw that she was under a fixed restraint, and that a word would frighten her into the deepest reserve. He treated her, therefore, as if she had been a Sister of Charity. Judith, who made up for her lack of knowledge of the world by rapid perceptions and natural talents, had seen more quickly than Throckmorton. Here was a man the like of whom she had not often met. Throckmorton knew perfectly well the solitary lives these country women led, and he had often wondered at the singular fortitude they showed. He set himself to work to find out what chiefly interested this young woman, who showed such remarkable constancy to her dead husband, but who gave indications to his practiced eye of secretly loving life and its concerns very much. He had heard about her pretty boy. At this Judith colored with pleasure and became positively talkative. Her boy was the sweetest boy--she would like never to have him out of her sight. Major Throckmorton, with a sardonic grin, confided to Judith that he would frequently be highly gratified at having _his_ son out of his sight, because Jack made the women think he, the major, was a Methuselah, and covertly made much game of him, for which he would like to kick Jack, but couldn't.

Judith laughed merrily at this--a laugh so clear and rippling, and yet so rare, that the sound of it startled her. Was Mrs. Beverley fond of reading? Mrs. Beverley was very fond of reading, but there was nothing newer in the array of books at Barn Elms than 1840. Major Throckmorton would be only too happy to supply her with books. He had had a few boxes full sent down to Millenbeck. At this Judith blushed, but accepted, without reflecting how Major Throckmorton was to send books to a house where he was not permitted to visit.

She also protested that she had read nothing at all scarcely; but Throckmorton came to find out that, for want of the every-day modern literature, she was perfectly at home in the English classics, and knew her Scott and Thackeray like a lesson well learned. He began to find this gentle intelligence and cordiality amazingly pleasant after the cold shyness of the girls and the unmistakable keep-your-distance air of the older women. They sat together so long that Mr. Morford began to scowl, and think that Mrs. Beverley, after all, was rather a frivolous person, and with every moment Judith became brighter, gayer, more her natural charming self.

Meanwhile Jack Throckmorton had carried Jacqueline off for a quadrille, and was getting on famously. First they remarked on the similarity of their names, which seemed a fateful coincidence, and Jacqueline complained that the servants and some other people, too, often shortened her liquid three syllables with "Jacky," but she hated it. Jack, who had a sweet, gay voice, and was an inveterate joker, which Jacqueline was not, amused both her and himself extremely.

"Will you look at the major?" he whispered. "Gone on the pretty widow--I beg your pardon," he added, turning very red.

"You needn't apologize," calmly remarked Jacqueline. "Judith _is_ a pretty widow, and the best and kindest sister in the world, besides. It is all mamma. Mamma loved my brother better than anything, and wants us all to think about him as much as she does."

Jack, rather embarrassed by these family confidences, parried them with some confidences of his own.

"I shall have to go over soon and break the major up. You see, there isn't but twenty-two years' difference between us, and the major is a great toast among the girls still, which is repugnant to my filial feelings."

Jacqueline listened gravely and in good faith.

"So, when I see him pleased with a girl, I generally sneak up on the other side, and manage to get my share of the girl's attention, and call the major 'father' every two minutes. A man hates to be interfered with that way, particularly by his own son, which doesn't often happen. The major has got a cast in one eye, and, whenever he is in a rage, he gets downright cross-eyed. Sometimes I work him up so, his eyes don't get straight for a fortnight."

"But doesn't he get very mad with you?" asked Jacqueline in a shocked voice.

"Of course he does," chuckled Jack; "and that's where the fun comes in. But, you see, he can't say anything; it is beneath his dignity; but his temper blazes up, although he doesn't say a word. Sometimes, when I've run him off two or three times close together, he hardly speaks to me for a week--not that he cares about the girl particularly, but he hates to be balked."

"What a nice sort of a son you must be!"

Jack laughed his frank, boyish laugh.

"Why, the major and I are the greatest chums in the world. I would do anything for him. And if he ever presents me with a step-mother, I'll do the handsome thing--go to the wedding, and all that. And he's a fascinating old fellow, too--just takes the girls off their feet."

When the dance was over, Jack brought Jacqueline back to Judith, who still sat with Throckmorton. Jacqueline's eyes were shining with childish delight, and she arched her thin white neck restlessly from side to side.

"I have had such a nice dance!" she cried, breathlessly.

Judith, smiling, said, "Major Throckmorton, this is my little sister Jacqueline."

Throckmorton, having once fixed his eyes on Jacqueline, seemed unable to take them off, as on that Sunday he had first seen her in Severn church. Delilah, who noticed in her primitive way the wonderful power of attraction that Jacqueline had, used to say, "Miss Jacky she allus cotches de beaux." She certainly "cotched" Throckmorton's attention from the first. Something in this slim, unformed, provincial girl was suddenly captivating to him. His genuine but sane admiration for Judith seemed tame beside it. Jacqueline, however, only saw a rather striking man, well on toward old age, in her infantile eyes, and wished herself back with Jack, when Major Throckmorton took her for a little promenade. Morford then made up to Judith, but found her singularly cold and unresponsive, and her eyes and smile were quite far away, over Morford's head, as it were. The truth is, the Rev. Edmund Morford was a considerable let-down from George Throckmorton; and, in Judith's starved and pinched existence, it was something to meet a man of Throckmorton's caliber. So in place of the charming sweetness Morford had learned to expect from Judith, he received a cold douche of listlessness and indifference. All the rest of the evening people noticed that Judith, who had a good deal of smoldering vivacity under her quietness, was remarkably cold and silent and rather bored, and they supposed it was because of her aversion to anything like gayety. In truth, Judith had realized rather more startlingly than usual the bareness and colorlessness of her life.

Mrs. Sherrard's effort was a strong one, but, as she said, it was scarcely a success. General Temple ostentatiously sought out Throckmorton, and tasted the delights of a discussion regarding the trans-Alpine campaigns of Hannibal, in which Throckmorton was a modest listener, and the general a most fiery, earnest, and learned expounder--a past grand-master of military science. But, on shaking Throckmorton's hand at saying good-night, with solemn but genuine effusiveness, he said not one word about calling at Millenbeck. Throckmorton went home feeling rather bitter toward all his county people, except his stanch friend Mrs. Sherrard; Judith, so gentle, clever, and well-read; and that fascinating child, Jacqueline.