Judith drew back and gave him a look that was equivalent to a slap in the face. Just then Mrs. Temple and Delilah went out into the hall to make fast the door.
“Well, then, if by any accident you have told me the truth, it was the fortune of war—”
“Yes, but the hand that killed your husband! Ah! do you think I don’t see it all—all—all—not only what has happened, but what is happening now?”
Judith rose slowly from her sofa, forgetting her weakness. At that moment Freke thought he had never seen her look so handsome. Her eyes, usually a soft, dark gray, were black with indignation; her cheeks burned; she looked capable of killing him where he stood. She opened her lips once or twice to speak, but no sound came. She had no words to express what she felt at that moment. Freke felt a sensation of triumph. At last he had brought this proud spirit to book; and Throckmorton—at least if she scorned himself, Freke—she was forever out of Throckmorton’s reach. There was a gulf between them now that nothing on earth could bridge over. He stood in a calm and easy attitude, his face only less expressive than Judith’s. Nobody who saw Freke then could say, as Mrs. Temple sometimes had said, “What is there so interesting in Freke’s face?” It was full of power and passion.
It seemed an age to each as they stood there, but it was really only a few moments. Mrs. Temple and Delilah came back. Judith nodded to Freke, and walked off, disdaining Delilah’s arm. She felt pride in showing him her strength and composure. She even glanced back at him, and gave him a smile from her pale lips.
“You have a spirit like a man!” he cried after her, involuntarily. Mrs. Temple thought he meant because Judith had rallied so quickly from her fainting-fit.
“Rather a spirit like a woman!” answered Judith, in a loud, clear voice, as she went up the stairs.
It was some little time before she could get rid of Mrs. Temple and Delilah. But presently the door was locked, and she was alone.
Some power beyond her will drew her steps to the window that looked toward Millenbeck. The moon had gone down, and a few clouds scurried across the pale immensity of the sky, whipped by the winds of night. There was enough of the ghastly half-light to distinguish the dark masses of the trees and even the outline of the Millenbeck house. From the window which she knew well enough belonged to Throckmorton’s own den the cheerful light still streamed. He was sitting there, reading and smoking, no doubt. She could imagine exactly how he looked. His face, when he was silent, was rather stern, which made the charm of his smile and his words more captivating by contrast. And what horror she ought to feel of this man!—for, in spite of that first involuntary protest that she did not believe Freke, the heart-breaking conviction came to her every moment that he was telling the truth. But did she feel horror and hatred of Throckmorton? Ah! no. And when she tried to think of Beverley, the feeling that he was dead; that he would trouble her no more; that he was forever gone out of her life, filled her with something that was frightfully like joy.
But when she remembered that an open grave lay between her and Throckmorton, it was not something like anguish she felt—it was anguish itself. Here was a man she might have loved—a man infinitely worthy of love—this much she acknowledged to herself; and yet Fate had married her to a man she never could have loved. For at that moment she saw as by a flash of lightning the falseness of her marriage and her widowhood. She dared not think any longer; she could only throw herself on her bed, and try and stifle among the pillows her sobs and cries. And, remembering Beverley and Throckmorton and Freke, and his words to her that night, this gentle and soft-hearted creature sounded all the depths of grief, love, shame, hatred. She tried to pray, but her prayers—if prayers they could be called—were mere outcries against the inexorable and unpitying God. “Dear Lord, what have I done to thee that I should suffer so?”
The night wore on, the candles burned out, the fire was a mere red glow of embers. Anguish and despair, like other passions, spend themselves. Judith had ceased to weep, and lay on her bed with a sort of icy torpor upon her. Little Beverley, who rarely stirred in his sleep, waked up and called for his mother; but even the child’s voice had no power to move her. The little boy, finding himself unnoticed, crawled out of his small bed and came to his mother’s side. The sound of his baby voice, the touch of his little warm, moist hands, awakened something like remorse in her. She tried to help him up on the bed, but her arms fell helplessly—she, this strong young woman, was as weak as a child with the conflict of emotions. The boy, however—a sturdy little fellow—climbed up alone and nestled to her. She covered him up and held him close to her, and kissed him coldly once or twice. “My child, he killed your father,” she said to him, thinking of Throckmorton, and that perhaps, for the child’s sake, she might arouse some feeble spark of regret for the father—some dutiful hatred of Throckmorton. But she could do neither the one nor the other.
At last, as a wet, miserable, gloomy dawn approached, she fell into a wretched sleep. Judith’s unexpected fainting-fit was a very good excuse for her keeping her room for a day or two—a merciful provision for her, as, along with other new experiences, she found for the first time that her soul was stronger than her body, and that grief had made her ill. She expected, in all those wretched hours that she lay in her darkened room, that every time the door opened it would be Mrs. Temple coming with a ghastly face to tell her the dreadful thing that Freke knew; and the mere apprehension made her heart stand still. She, this candid and sincere woman, rehearsed to herself the very words and tones that she would express a grief and horror she did not feel. But when several days passed, and the explosion did not come, she concluded that Freke, for his own reasons, meant to keep it to himself.
For Freke’s part, he had no intention of telling anybody except Judith. He had no mind to bring about the storm that would follow his revelation. He meant to show Judith that gulf between Throckmorton and herself, and that was all. He would have been unfeignedly sorry had the hospitable doors of Millenbeck been no longer open to him.
When Judith came down-stairs, he felt a great curiosity to know how she would meet him. He himself was perfectly easy and natural in his manner to her; and she, to his enforced admiration, was equally self-possessed with him, although she could not always control the expression of her eyes. “What a Spartan she is!” thought Freke to himself. “She could die of grief and chagrin with a smile on her lips, and with her voice as smooth and musical as the velvet wind of summer.”
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 kept up 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, Cæsar, 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-cochère, 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.
A day or two after this, however, came a snow, deep and lasting, more like a midwinter snow in New England than a December flurry in lower Virginia. For four weeks the sun scarcely shone, and the earth was wrapped in white. The roads were impassable, the river-steamers stopped running, and the mails were delayed for days at a time. The country people were much cut off from each other. Mrs. Temple missed four successive Sundays at church—a thing she had never done in her life before. Nobody could get to Barn Elms except the Throckmortons and Freke, but they came often in the evenings. Throckmorton saw what was before him with Jacqueline, yet held back, as engineers put down the brakes on a wild engine on a down grade—it does not, however, materially alter the result. He sometimes thought, with a sense of the grotesqueness of human affairs, how strange it was that things had not arranged themselves so that Jack had not been Jacqueline’s victim, and himself Judith’s. For Jack was undeniably fond of Jacqueline, and so far did not in the slightest degree suspect his father’s infatuation, as Throckmorton frankly and bitterly acknowledged it to be. As for Judith, Nature leaves no true woman unarmed for suffering like hers. Even Jacqueline, who was sharp-eyed, only noticed that Judith at this time was, if anything, a little sweeter and kinder than before—even a little more gay. Little Beverley found his mother better company than usual, and more ready for a romp than ever before. The child, whom she had thought everything to her before, became now more passionately dear to her. Alone with him, she would take him in her arms and hold him close to her; she felt an actual softening of the pain at her heart when the child’s curly head rested over it. Then she would talk to him in a way the child only half understood, as he gazed at her with grave, mystified eyes, and, while laughing at his childish wonder, she would almost smother him with kisses. Judith was positively becoming merry. In her voice was a ring, in her eyes a light that was different from that calm, untroubled composure that had once marked her. Her manner to Throckmorton was perfect; the same gentle gayety, the same graceful dignity. She did not avoid him; pain wrung no such concession from Judith Temple. But Judith’s invincible cheerfulness was strangely antagonized by Jacqueline. Jacqueline, who talked to her own heart in a very primitive, open fashion, was vexed at the notion that, in order to be mistress of Millenbeck, she would have to marry Throckmorton. How much nicer, thought Jacqueline, with great simplicity, if it were Jack who gave her those looks, those words, who had pressed that kiss upon her hand! Throckmorton was too old, and had too much sense; Jacqueline made no secret in acknowledging that mature men of sense bored and restrained her. It was very hard, she thought, disconsolately. Ever since that dinner at Millenbeck, Barn Elms had appeared shabbier and sorrier than ever before. Although Mrs. Temple continued to have five kinds of bread for breakfast, and had invited a regiment of poor relations to spend the coming summer with her, under the Virginia delusion that it costs nothing to harbor a garrison for an indefinite time, things were certainly going very badly at Barn Elms; a condition of affairs, though, to which General Temple was perfectly accustomed, and who knew no other way of paying Peter than by robbing Paul. The old carriage went all to pieces just about that time, and there was no money to buy another one. As for a new piano, that was an impossible dream; and there were two splendid new pianos at Millenbeck, and not a soul to touch them! And Jacqueline wanted a new frock, and endless other things, which were distinctly out of the question, and the only way to get them, that she could see, was to encourage Throckmorton’s attentions and be mistress of Millenbeck. All this was not lost on Freke, who, with his eyes open, began to play with Jacqueline, and like Throckmorton got his wings scorched. The girl certainly had a power of compelling love. Had Judith ever relented toward Freke, Jacqueline would have had cause for jealousy if she loved him. But, in truth, as it came to pass, Freke cast as much of a spell upon Jacqueline as she did upon him. If Freke owned Millenbeck, instead of that wretched old Wareham, that actually was not as good as Barn Elms! So Jacqueline fretted to herself.
The loneliness of those cold, snowy days was killing to Jacqueline. The long afternoons when she sat by the drawing-room fire and dreamed dreams, were almost intolerable to her. When she heard Beverley’s shouts, as Judith romped with him in the cold hall, and hid from him in the dusk until the child set up a baby cry, it was the only living cheerful noise about the house. Judith would come to her and say, “Now, Jacky, for a walk in the hall!” Jacqueline would answer fretfully:
“What do I want to walk for?”
“Because it is better than sitting still.”
Judith would take her by the waist and run her up and down the long, dusky hall. It was so cold they shivered at first, and the rattling of the great windows let icy gusts of air in upon them; and sometimes the moon would glare in at them in a ghastly way. Presently they would hear Simon Peter bringing in wood for the night by the back way, shaking the snow off his feet, and announcing to Delilah: “I tell you what, ole ’oman, ’tis everlastin’ cole an’ gwine ter keep so, fer I seed de hosses in de stable kickin’ de lef’ hine-foots; an’ dat’s sho’ an’ suttin sign o’ freezin’.”
“You better kick dat lef’ hine-foot o’ yourn, an’ stop studyin’ ’bout de hosses, fo’ mistis come arter you! Ez long ez ole marse holler at you, you doan’ min’; but jes’ let mistis in dat sof’ voice say right fine, ‘Simon Peter!’ I lay you jes’ hop,” was Delilah’s wifely reply.
General Temple, confined to the house by the weather, drew military maps with great precision, and worked hard upon his History of Temple’s Brigade. The fact that he knew much more about the Duke of Marlborough’s campaigns, or Prince Eugene’s, or anybody’s, in fact, than he did about any he had been directly engaged in, in no wise set him back. Mrs. Temple, who thought the general a prodigy of military science, was rejoiced that he had something to divert him through the long wintry days, when Barn Elms was as completely shut in from even the little neighborhood world as if it were in the depths of a Russian forest. Jack Throckmorton, who after a while began to see that the major was certainly singed, as he expressed it to himself, did not carry out his usual tactics of making his vicinity too hot for his father, but when he wished to see Jacqueline went over in the mornings. If the weather was tolerable, they were pretty sure to find their way to the ice-pond. Jack, carrying on his arm a little wooden chair, and putting Jacqueline in it, would push it over the ice before him as he sped along on skates. Then Jacqueline’s fresh, young laugh would ring out shrilly—then she was happy. Sometimes Judith and Throckmorton, smiling, would watch them. Jack liked Mrs. Beverley immensely, but he confided to Jacqueline that he was a little afraid of her—just as Jacqueline candidly admitted she was in awe of Major Throckmorton. Throckmorton, watching this childish boy and girl fun, would sometimes laugh inwardly and grimly at himself. How true was it, as Mrs. Sherrard had said, that Jacqueline would make a good playmate for Jack! And then he would turn to Judith, and try to persuade himself of her sweetness and truth. But love comes not by persuasion.
Jack had been giving Jacqueline glowing accounts of the sleigh-rides he had had in the Northwest. Jacqueline was crazy for a sleigh-ride, but there was no such thing as a sleigh in the county. One evening, after tea, as Jacqueline sat dolefully clasping her knees and looking in the fire, and Judith, with hands locked in her lap, was doing the same; Mrs. Temple knitting placidly by the lamp, while General Temple held forth on certain blunders he had discovered in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand—a strange tinkling sound was heard far—far away—almost as if it were in another world! Jacqueline sat perfectly still and gazed into Judith’s eyes. Judith got up and went into the hall. A great patch of moonlight shone through the uncurtained window, and outside it was almost as light as day. The limbs and trunks of the great live-oaks looked preternaturally dark against the white earth and the blue-black, star-lit sky. Suddenly Simon Peter’s head appeared cautiously around the corner of the house, and in a minute or two he came up the back way and planted himself at Judith’s elbow.
“Gord A’mighty, Miss Judy, what dat ar’? What dem bells ringin’ fur? I ’spect de evils is ’broad. I done see two Jack-my-lanterns dis heah night.”
Judith fixed her eyes on the long, straight lane bordered with solemn cedars; she saw a dark object moving along, and heard the sharp click of horses’ shoes on the frozen snow.
“It’s somebody coming,” she said, and in a moment, she cried out joyfully:
“O Jacky, come—come! it’s a sleigh—I see Jack Throckmorton driving—Major Throckmorton is there—and there are four seats!”
Jacqueline jumped up and ran out. She had never seen a sleigh in her life, and there it was turning into the drive before the house. Jack had the reins, and the major’s two thoroughbreds were flying along at a rattling pace, and the bells were jingling loudly and merrily. Jacqueline almost danced with delight. By the time the sleigh drew up at the door, Simon Peter was there to take the reins, and Throckmorton and Jack jumped out and came up the steps. The general and Mrs. Temple were also roused to come out and meet them. As the hall-door swung open, a blast of arctic air entered. Throckmorton’s dark eyes looked black under his seal-skin cap. Jack plunged into business at once.
“Now, Mrs. Temple, you must let me take Miss Jacqueline for a spin to-night; never saw better sleighing in my life. The major’s along, and you know he is as steady as old Time”—the major at heart did not relish this—“and, if Mrs. Beverley will go, it will be awfully jolly.”
Mrs. Temple began some mild protest: it was too cold, or too late, or something; but for once Jacqueline did not hear her, and bounded off up-stairs for her wraps. Even Judith, usually so calm, was a little carried away by the prospect.
“Come, mother, Major Throckmorton and I will take care of them.”
Mrs. Temple yielded.
“I will take care of Beverley while you are gone,” she said, and Judith blushed. Was she forgetting the child?
In five minutes both of them were ready. Judith had pressed her soft cheeks to Beverley’s as she leaned over the sleeping child. Surely nobody could say she was a forgetful mother.
The sleigh was Jack’s. He had sent away and bought it, and it had arrived that evening. Jacqueline sat on the front seat with him, her face glowing with smiles on the clear, cold night, as he wrapped the fur robes around her. Throckmorton did the same for Judith. For once she had left off her widow’s veil, and for once she forgot that secret pain and determined to be happy. Jack touched up the horses, and off they flew. As for Jacqueline and himself, their pleasure was of that youthful, effervescing sort that never comes after twenty-five; but Throckmorton and Judith began to feel some of the exhilaration and excitement. Throckmorton had lately heard Mrs. Sherrard’s views about Judith’s marriage, and it had made him feel a very great pity for her.
“Where are we going?” cried Jacqueline, as they dashed along.
“Anywhere—nowhere—to Turkey Thicket!” replied Jack, lightly touching the flying horses with his whip.
“We will frighten Mrs. Sherrard to death!” said Judith, from the back seat, burying her face in her muff.
It was not a time to think about anybody else, though. The five miles to Turkey Thicket sped away like lightning. When they dashed through the gate and drew up before the house, half a dozen darkies were there gaping; and Mrs. Sherrard, with a shawl thrown over her head, was standing in the doorway, and standing behind her was Freke.
As they all got out, laughing, huddling, and slipping up the stone steps, Mrs. Sherrard greeted them with her characteristic cordiality, demanding that they should take off their wraps before they were half up the steps. She gave Throckmorton a comical look, and whispered to him as he shook hands with her: “Out with the Sister of Charity, hey? Or is it the child Jacky?” Throckmorton laughed rather uneasily. He had never got over that remark of Mrs. Sherrard’s about Jacqueline being a playmate for Jack.
They all went trooping into the dining-room, where a huge fire blazed. Mrs. Sherrard called up her factotum, a venerable negro woman, Delilah’s double, and in ten minutes they were sitting around the table laughing and eating and drinking. The colored factotum had brought out a large yellow bowl, a big, flat, blue dish, and a rusty bottle. Eggs and milk followed.
“Egg-nog,” whispered Jack to Jacqueline.
So it was. Freke broke up the eggs, and Mrs. Sherrard, with a great carving-knife, beat up the whites, while she talked and occasionally flourished the knife uncomfortably near Freke’s nose. Throckmorton poured in the rum and brandy with such liberality that Judith with great firmness took both bottles away from him. The egg-nog was a capital brew. Then Freke produced his violin, and saying, “Hang your Brahms and Beethovens!” dashed into waltzes of Strauss and Waldteufel that made the very air vibrate with joy and gayety and rhythm. Jack seized Jacqueline, and, opening the door, they flew out into the half-lighted hall and spun around delightedly. As Freke’s superb bow-arm flashed back and forth, and the torrent of melody poured out of the violin, his eyes flashed, too. He did not mean to play always for Jacqueline to dance.
Judith, standing at the door, watched the two young figures whirling merrily around in the half-light to the resounding waltz-music. She was altogether taken by surprise when Throckmorton came up to her, and said, half laughing and half embarrassed:
“My dancing days are over, but that waltz is charming.”
Judith did not quite take in what he meant, but without a word he clasped her waist, and she was gliding off with him. Throckmorton would have scorned the characterization of a “dancing man,” but nevertheless he danced well, and Judith moved like a breeze. She went around the big hall once—twice—before the idea that it was inconceivably wicked of her to dance with Throckmorton came to her; not, indeed, until she saw Freke’s wide mouth expanded into a smile that was infuriating. And then, what would Mrs. Temple say to her dancing at all?
“Oh, pray, stop!” she cried, blushing furiously. “I can’t dance any more; I ought never to have begun. I haven’t danced for—for years.”
Throckmorton stopped at once, with pity in his eyes. He suspected the sort of angelic dragooning to which she was subject from his dear Mrs. Temple.
“Why shouldn’t you dance?” he said. “I see you like it. Come, let’s try it again. I’m a little rusty, perhaps, but we got on famously just now.” But Judith would not try it again.
Freke now meant to have his innings.
“Do you know this is Twelfth-night—the night for telling fortunes?” he said, laying down his violin.—“Come, Jacky, let me take you out of doors and show you the moon and tell yours.”
“In this snow!” screamed Mrs. Sherrard; but by that time Freke had thrown a shawl over Jacqueline’s head, and had dragged her out of the room, and the hall-door banged loudly after them.
Outside, in the cold, white moonlight and the snow, Freke pointed to the moon.
“Now make your wish,” he said; “but don’t wish for Millenbeck.”
Jacqueline’s face could turn no redder than it was, but she looked at Freke, and answered on impulse, as she always did:
“Millenbeck is finer than Barn Elms—”
“Or Wareham,” responded Freke, fixing her attention with a stare out of his bold eyes. “See here, Jacqueline, I know how it is. You think you will be able to put up with Throckmorton for the sake of Millenbeck. My dear, he is old—”
“He is only forty-four,” answered Jacqueline, defiantly.
“And you are only twenty-one. You would be happier even at Wareham with me, than at Millenbeck with Throckmorton.”
“I couldn’t be happy in a five-roomed house,” quite truthfully said Jacqueline.
“Yes, you could. I could make you forget whether it had five or ten rooms.”
At this, he put two fingers under her chin, and, tilting up her rosy face, kissed her on the mouth. “Come!” cried Freke, after a little while, remembering how time was flying, which Jacqueline had evidently forgotten, and making for the steps; but Jacqueline stopped him with a scared face.
“Aren’t you married, Freke?” she asked.
“Not a bit of it,” answered Freke, stoutly. “Don’t you believe all the old women’s tales you hear about me, Jacky. I’m no more married than you are this minute. I have been, I admit, but I slipped my head out of the noose some time ago. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” answered Jacqueline, who could believe anything, “if—if—people can really be divorced.”
They had not been gone ten minutes, when they returned, yet Freke saw a danger-signal flying in Judith’s cheeks. She did not mean to have any more of this. Mrs. Sherrard, who had become an active partisan of Freke’s, asked, as soon as they came in:
“What wish did you make, Jacky?”