CHAPTER VII.
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.