The Project Gutenberg EBook of Throckmorton, by Molly Elliot Seawell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Throckmorton Author: Molly Elliot Seawell Release Date: July 24, 2011 [EBook #36829] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROCKMORTON *** Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THROCKMORTON A NOVEL BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers :: :: New York Copyright, 1890 By D. Appleton & Co. Copyright, 1909 The Bobbs-Merrill Company CONTENTS Chapter I Chapter VIII Chapter II Chapter IX Chapter III Chapter X Chapter IV Chapter XI Chapter V Chapter XII Chapter VI Chapter XIII Chapter VII Chapter XIV THROCKMORTON. CHAPTER I. In a lowland Virginia neighborhood, strangely cut off from the rest of the world geographically, and wrapped in a profound and charming stillness, a little universe exists. It has its oracles of law, medicine, and divinity; its wars and alliances. Free from that outward contact which makes an intolerable sameness among people, its types develop quaintly. There is peace, and elbow-room for everybody’s peculiarities. Such was the Severn neighborhood—called so from Severn church. Every brick in this old pile had been brought from green England two hundred years before. It seemed as if, in those early days, nothing made with hands should be without picturesqueness; and so this ancient church, paid for in hogsheads of black tobacco, which was also the currency in which the hard-riding, hard-drinking parsons took their dues, was peaked and gabled most beautifully. The bricks, mellowed by two centuries, had become a rich, dull red, upon which, year after year, in the enchanted Southern summers and the fitful Southern winters, mosses and gray lichens laid their clinging fingers. It was set far back from the broad, white road, and gnarled live-oaks and silver beeches and the melancholy weeping-willows grew about the churchyard. Their roots had pushed, with gentle persistence, through the crumbling brick wall that surrounded it, where most of the tombstones rested peacefully upon the ground as they chanced to fall. Within the church itself, modern low- backed pews had supplanted the ancient square boxes during an outbreak of philistinism in the fifties. At the same time, a wooden flooring had been laid over the flat stones in the aisles, under which dead and gone vicars—for the parish had a vicar in colonial days—slept quietly. The interior was darkened by the branches of the trees that pressed against the wall and peered curiously through the small, clear panes of the oblong windows; and over all the singular, unbroken peace and silence of the region brooded. The country round about was fruitful and tame, the slightly rolling landscape becoming as flat as Holland toward the rich river-bottoms. The rivers were really estuaries, making in from the salt ocean bays, and as briny as the sea itself. Next the church was the parsonage land, still known as the Glebe, although glebes and tithes had been dead these hundred years. The Glebe house, which was originally plain and old-fashioned, had been smartened up by the rector, the Rev. Edmund Morford, until it looked like an old country-woman masquerading in a ballet costume; but the Rev. Edmund thought it beautiful, and only watched his chance to lay sacrilegious hands on the old church and to plaster it all over with ecclesiastical knickknacks of various sorts. The Rev. Mr. Morford had come into the world handicapped by the most remarkable personal beauty, and extreme fluency of tongue. Otherwise, he was an honest and conscientious man. But he belonged to that common class among ecclesiastics who know all about the unknowable, and have accurately measured the unfathomable. On Sundays, when he got up in the venerable pulpit at Severn, looking so amazingly handsome in his snow-white surplice, he dived into the everlasting mysteries with a cocksureness that was appalling or delightful according to the view one took of it. In the tabernacle of his soul, which was quite empty of guile and malice, three devils had taken up their abode: one was the conviction of his own beauty, another was the conviction of his own cleverness, and still another was the suspicion that every woman who looked at him wanted to marry him. Mr. Morford reasoned thus: I. That all women want to get married. II. That an Edmund Morford is not to be picked up every day. III. That eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. On Sundays he scarcely dared look toward the pew where General and Mrs. Temple sat, with their beautiful widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs. Beverley Temple, on one side of them, and Jacqueline Temple, as lovely in her small, kittenish way, on the other, for fear that one or the other of these young women would fall hopelessly in love with him. Mrs. Beverley, as the young widow was called, to distinguish her from the elder Mrs. Temple, had the fatal charm for the Rev. Edmund that all things feared and admired have. He believed in his heart of hearts that widows were made for his undoing, and that the good old Hindoo custom of burning them up alive was the only really safe disposition to make of [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] them. The charm of Judith Temple’s piquant face and soft, shy eyes was somewhat neutralized by a grim suspicion lodged in Mr. Morford’s mind that she was unnecessarily clever. The Rev. Edmund had a wholesome awe of clever women, especially if they had a knack of humor, and was very much afraid of them. Judith had a sedate way of replying to Morford’s resounding platitudes that sometimes created a laugh, and when he laboriously unwound the meaning, he was apt to find the germ of a joke; and Judith was so grave—her eyes were so sweetly serious when she was laying traps to catch the Rev. Edmund’s sluggish wits. But Judith herself thought of no man whatever, and had learned to regard the sparkle of her unquenchable humor almost as a sin. However, having got a bad name for cleverness, neither the most sincere modesty nor the deepest courtesy availed her in keeping it quiet. Morford, in his simple soul, thought a clever woman could do anything; and suppose Judith should cast her eyes on—at this the Rev. Edmund would turn pale in the midst of his sermon when he caught Judith’s gray eyes fixed soberly on him. Soberness—and particularly Judith’s soberness—was deceitful. Barn Elms, the Temple place, was near to the Glebe and to Severn church. The house was rambling and shabby, and had been patched and pieced, with an utter disregard of architectural proportion that resulted in a curious and unexpected picturesqueness. A room was put on here, and a porch was clapped up there, just as the fancy of each successive Temple had dictated. It was partly of brick and partly of stone. Around it stood in tall ranks the solemn, black-leaved poplars, and great locust-trees grew so close to the house that on windy nights the sound of their giant arms beating the shingled roof awoke superstitious fears in the negroes, who declared it to be the “sperrits” of dead and gone Temples struggling to get in through the chimneys. There was a step up or a step down in every room in the house, and draughts enough in the unnecessary halls and passages to turn a windmill. There was, of course, that queer mixture of shabbiness and luxury about the old place and the mode of living that is characteristic of Virginia. Mrs. Temple had piles and piles of linen sheets laid away with the leaves of damask roses between them in the old cedar chests, but half the rooms and all the stairs and passages were uncarpeted. It required the services of an able-bodied negro to keep these floors polished—but polished they were, like a looking-glass. The instrument used in this process was called a “dry-rubbin’ bresh” by the manipulators, and might well have been used in Palestine during the days of Herod the tetrarch, being merely a block of wood covered with a sheepskin, well matted with wax and turpentine. At unearthly hours, in cold winter mornings and gray summer dawns, the monotonous echo of this “bresh” going up and down the hall-floors was the earliest sound in the Barn Elms house. There was a full service of silver plate displayed upon a huge and rickety mahogany sideboard, but there was a lack of teaspoons. Mrs. Temple had every day a dinner fit for a king, but General Temple was invariably behindhand with his taxes. The general’s first purchase after the war was a pair of splendid Kentucky horses to pull the old carriage bought when Mrs. Temple was a bride, and which was so moth-eaten and worm-eaten and rust-eaten that when it started out it was a wonder that it ever came back again. The kitchen was a hundred yards from the house in one direction, and the well, with its old-fashioned bucket and sweep, was a hundred yards off in another direction. The ice-house and stables were completely out of sight; while the negro houses, annually whitewashed a glaring white, were rather too near. But none of these things annoyed General and Mrs. Temple, who would have stared in gentle surprise at the hint that anything at Barn Elms could be improved. General Temple, six feet tall, as straight as an Indian, with a rich, commanding voice and a lofty stride, stood for the shadow of domestic authority; while Mrs. Temple, a gentle, affectionate, soft-spoken, devoted, and obstinate woman, who barely reached to the general’s elbow, was the actual substance. From the day of their marriage he had never questioned her decision upon any subject whatever, although an elaborate fiction of marital authority was maintained between them and devoutly believed in by both. Mrs. Temple always consulted the general punctiliously—when she had made up her mind—and General Temple, after a ponderous pretense of thinking it over, would say in his fine, sonorous voice: “My dear Jane, the conviction of your extremely sound judgment, formed from my experience of you during thirty years of married life, inclines me to the opinion that your suggestion is admirable. You have my permission, my love”—a permission Mrs. Temple never failed to accept with wifely gratitude, and, like the general, really thought it amounted to something. This status is extremely common in Virginia, where, as a rule, the men have a magnificent but imaginary empire, and the women conduct the serious business of life. Brave, chivalrous, generous, loving God and revering woman, General Temple was as near a monster of perfection as could be imagined, except when he had the gout. Then he became transformed into a full-blown demon. From the most optimistic form of Episcopal faith, he lapsed into the darkest Calvinism as soon as he felt the first twinge of his malady, and by the time he was a prisoner in the “charmber,” as the bedroom of the mistress of the family is called in Virginia, he believed that the whole world was created to be damned. Never had General Temple been known under the most violent provocation to use profane language; but under the baleful influence of gout and superheated religion combined, he always swore like a pirate. His womenkind, who quietly bullied him during the best part of the year, found him a person to be feared when he began to have doubts about freewill and election. To this an exception must be made in favor of Mrs. Temple and of Delilah, the household factotum, who was no more afraid of General Temple than Mrs. Temple was. She it was who was mainly responsible for these carnivals of gout by feeding the patient on fried oysters and plum-pudding when Dr. Wortley prescribed gruel and tapioca. Delilah was one of the unterrified, and used these spells to preach boldly at General Temple the doctrines of the “Foot-washin’ Baptisses,” a large and influential colored sect to which she belonged. “Ole marse,” Delilah would begin, argumentatively, “if you wuz ter jine de Foot-washers—” “Jane! Jane!” General Temple would shout.—“Come here, my love. If you don’t get rid of this infernal old fool, who wants absolutely to dragoon me out of my religion, I’ll be damned if I—God forgive me for swearing—and you, my [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] dear—” Sometimes these theological discussions had been known to end by Delilah’s flying out of the room, with the general’s boot-jack whizzing after her. At Mrs. Temple’s appearance, though, the emeute would be instantly quelled. Delilah was also actively at war with Dr. Wortley, as the black mammies and the doctors invariably were, and during the visits of the doctor, who was a peppery little man, it was no infrequent thing to hear his shrill falsetto, the general’s loud basso, and Delilah’s emphatic treble all combined in an angry three-cornered discussion carried on at the top of their lungs. Like mistress, like maid. As Mrs. Temple ruled the general, Delilah ruled Simon Peter, her husband, who since the war was butler, coachman, gardener, and man-of-all-work at Barn Elms. Mrs. Temple, however, ruled with circumlocution as well as circumspection, and had not words sufficient to condemn women who attempt to govern their husbands. But Delilah had no such scruples, and frequently treated Simon Peter to remarks like these: “Menfolks is mighty consequenchical. Dey strut ’bout, an’ dey cusses an’ damns, an’ de womenfolks do all de thinkin’ an’ de wukkin’. How long you think ole marse keep dis heah plantation if it warn’t fur mistis?” “Look a heah, ’oman,” Simon Peter would retaliate, when intolerably goaded, “Paul de ’postle say—” “What anybody keer fur Paul de ’postle? Womenfolks ain’ got no use fur dat ole bachelor. Men is cornvenient fur ter tote water, an’ I ain’ seen nuttin’ else much dey is good fur.” Simon Peter’s entire absence of style partly accounted for the low opinion of his abilities entertained by his better half. He was slouchy and sheep-faced, and, when he appeared upon great occasions in one of General Temple’s cast-off coats, the tails dragged the ground, while the sleeves had to be turned back nearly to the elbow. Delilah, on the contrary, was as tall as a grenadier, and had an air of command second only to General Temple himself and much more genuine. She was addicted to loud, linsey-woolsey plaids, and on her head was an immaculately white “handkercher” knotted into a turban that would have done credit to the Osmanlis. The war had given General Temple the opportunity of his lifetime. He “tendered his sword to his State,” as he expressed it, immediately organized Temple’s Brigade, and thereafter won a reputation as the bravest and most incompetent commander of his day. His ideas of a brigade commander were admirably suited to the middle ages. He would have been great with Richard Cœur de Lion at the siege of Ascalon, but of modern warfare the general was as innocent as a babe. It was commonly reported that, the first time he led his brigade into action, he did not find it again for three days. His men called him Pop, and always cheered him vociferously, but pointedly declined to follow him wherever he should lead, which was invariably where he oughtn’t to have been. He had innumerable horses shot under him, but, by a succession of miracles, escaped wounds or capture. It was a serious mortification to the general that he should have come out of the war with both arms and both legs; and it was marvelous, considering that he put himself in direct line of fire upon every possible occasion, and galloped furiously about, waving his sword whenever he was in a particularly ticklish place. Since the war General Temple had found congenial employment in studying the art of war as exemplified in books, and in writing a History of Temple’s Brigade. As he knew less about it than any man in it, his undertaking was a considerable one, especially as he had to give a personal sketch, with pedigree and anecdotes, of every member of the brigade. He had started out to complete this great work in three volumes, but it looked as if ten would be nearer the mark. As regards the theory of war, General Temple soon became an expert, and knew by heart every campaign of importance from those of Hannibal, the one-eyed son of Hamilcar, down to Appomattox. A good deal of the money that would have paid his taxes went into the general’s military library, which was a source of endless pride to him, and which caused the History of Temple’s Brigade to be, in some sort, a history of all wars, ancient and modern. The pride and satisfaction this literary work of his gave the general’s honest heart can not be described. He read passages of it aloud to Mrs. Temple and Judith and Jacqueline in the solemn evenings in the old country-house, his resonant voice echoing through the old-fashioned, low-pitched drawing-room. Mrs. Temple listened sedately and admiringly, and thanked Heaven for having given her this prodigy of valor and learning. Nor, after hearing the History of Temple’s Brigade all the evening, was she wearied when, at two o’clock in the morning, General Temple would have a wakeful period, and striding up and down the bedroom floor, wrapped in a big blanket over his dressing-gown, declaimed and dissected all the campaigns of the war, from Big Bethel to Appomattox. Mrs. Temple, sitting up in bed, with the most placid air in the world, would listen, and thank and admire and love more than ever this hero, whom she had wrapped around her finger for the last thirty years. O blessed ignorance—O happy blindness of women! which gracious boon God has not withheld from any of the sex. But there was something else that made General Temple’s long-winded war stories so deeply, tragically interesting to Mrs. Temple. There had been a son—the husband of the handsome daughter-in-law—Mrs. Temple could not yet speak his name without a sob in her voice. That was what she had given to the great fight. When the news of his death came, General Temple, who had never before dreamed of helping Mrs. Temple’s stronger nature, had ridden night and day to be with her at that supreme moment, knowing that the blow would crush her if it did not kill her. She came out of the furnace alive but unforgetting. She would not herself forget Beverley, nor would she allow anybody else to forget him. She remembered his anniversaries, she cherished his belongings; she, this tender, excellent, self-sacrificing woman, sacrificed, as far as she could, herself and everybody else to the memory of the dead and gone Beverley. As fast as one crape band on the general’s hat wore out, she herself, with trembling hands, sewed another one on. As for herself, she would have thought it sacrilege to have worn anything but the deepest black; and Judith, after four years of widowhood, wore, whether willingly or unwillingly, the severest [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] widow’s garb. Jacqueline alone had been suffered, out of consideration for her youth and the general’s pleading, to put on colors. The girl, who was beautiful and simple, but quite different from other girls, in her heart cherished a hatred against this memory of the dead, that had made her youth so sad, so encompassed with death. Jacqueline loved life and feared death; and whenever her mother began to speak of Beverley, which she did a dozen times a day, Jacqueline’s shoulders would twitch impatiently. She longed to say: “What is he to us? He is dead—and we live. Why can’t he be allowed to rest in peace, like other dead people?” Jacqueline was far from heartless; she loved her sister-in-law twice as well as she had ever loved her handsome silent brother, whose death made no gap in her life, but had ruthlessly barred out all brightness from it. Jacqueline, in her soul, longed for luxury and comfort. All the discrepancies and deficiencies at Barn Elms were actually painful to her, although she had been used to them all her life. She wanted a new piano instead of the wheezy old machine in the drawing-room. She wanted a thousand things, and, to make her dissatisfaction with Barn Elms more complete, not a quarter of a mile away, across a short stretch of feathery pine- trees, on a knoll, stood a really great house, Millenbeck by name. To Jacqueline’s inexperienced eyes, the large square brick house, with its stone balustrade around the roof, its broad porch, with marble steps that shone whitely through the trees around it, was quite palatial. And nobody at all lived there. It was the family place of the Throckmortons. The last Throckmorton in the county was dead and gone; but there was another—grandson to the last—a certain Major George Throckmorton, who, although Virginian born and bred, had remained in the regular army all through the war, and was still in it. This George Throckmorton had spent his boyhood at Millenbeck with his grandfather, who was evil tempered and morose, and thoroughly wicked in every way. The old man had gone to his account during the war, and since then his creditors had been fighting over his assets, which consisted of Millenbeck alone. Major Throckmorton had money, and it had been whispered about that, whenever Millenbeck was sold, this army Throckmorton would buy it. But it was freely predicted that he would never dare show his face in his native county after his turpitude during the war in fighting against his State, and he was commonly alluded to as a traitor. Nevertheless, at Severn church, one Sunday, it was said that this Throckmorton had bought Millenbeck, and would shortly make his appearance there. General and Mrs. Temple, as they sat on opposite sides of the fireplace at Barn Elms, discussing the matter with the profound gravity that the advent of a new neighbor in the country requires, to say nothing of the sensation of having a traitor at one’s doors, came nearer disagreeing than usual. The night was cool, although it was early in September, and a little fire sparkled cheerfully upon the brass andirons on the hearth in the low-pitched, comfortable, shabby drawing- room. Mrs. Temple, clicking her knitting-needles placidly, with her soft eyes fixed on the fire, went over the enormity of those to whom Beverley’s death was due. To her, the gentlest and at the same time the sternest of women, the war took on a personal aspect that would have been ludicrous had it not been pathetic. Ah! what was that boy that Beverley had left, what was Judith the young widow, or even Jacqueline, to that lost son? Nothing, nothing! Mrs. Temple, still gazing at the fire, saw in her mind, as she saw every hour of the day and many of the night, the dead man lying stark and cold; and, as if in answer to her thoughts, General Temple spoke, laying down his volume of Jomini: “My love, what will you do—ahem! what would you recommend me to do regarding George Throckmorton when he arrives? Speak frankly, my dear, and do not be timid about giving me your opinion.” A curious kind of resentment shone in Mrs. Temple’s face. “It is not for a woman to guide her husband; but we at least can not forget what the war has cost us.” General Temple sighed. He had heard that Throckmorton had got a year’s leave and would probably spend it at Millenbeck. How fascinating did the prospect appear of a real military man with whom he could discuss plans of campaign, and flank movements, and reconnaissances, and all the technique of war in which his soul delighted! For, although Dr. Wortley had become a great military critic, as everybody was in those days, he had never smelt powder, and was a very inferior antagonist for a brigadier-general, who had been in sixteen pitched battles without understanding the first thing about any of them. Jacqueline, who sat in her own little chair, with her feet on a footstool, and her elbows on her knees, began in an injured voice: “And the house is going to be perfectly grand. Mrs. Sherrard told me about it to-day. A whole parcel of people”— Jacqueline was a provincial, although an amazingly pretty one—“a whole parcel of people came by the boat—workmen and servants, and most splendid furniture, carpets, and pictures, and cabinets, and all sorts of elegant things—just for those two men—for there is a young man, too—Jack is his name.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Temple, meditatively, as she still clicked her knitting-needles together with a pleasant musical sound, “the boy must be about twenty-two. George Throckmorton I well remember was married at twenty-one to a pretty slip of a girl, so I’ve heard, who lived a very little while. He can’t be more than forty-four now. He is the last man I ever supposed would ever turn traitor. He was the finest lad—I remember him so well when he was a handsome black-eyed boy; and when we were first married—don’t you recollect, my dear?” General Temple rose gallantly, and, taking Mrs. Temple’s hand in his, kissed it. “Can you ask me, my love, if I remember anything connected with that most interesting period of my life?” he asked. Neither the handsome Judith nor little Jacqueline were at all discomposed by this elderly love-making, to which they were perfectly accustomed. A slight blush came into Mrs. Temple’s refined, middle-aged face. It was worth while to [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] coddle a man, and take all the labor of thinking and acting off his shoulders, for the sake of this delightful sentiment. Like his courage, General Temple’s sentiment was high-flown but genuine. “I was about to say,” resumed Mrs. Temple, when the general had returned to his chair, “that when I came to Barn Elms a bride, George Throckmorton was much here. You did not notice him, my love, as I did—but I felt sorry for the boy; old George Throckmorton certainly was a most godless person. The boy’s life would have been quite wretched, I think, in spite of his grandfather’s liberality to him, but for the few people in the neighborhood like Kitty Sherrard and myself, who tried to comfort him. He would come over in the morning and stay all day, following me about the house and garden, trying to amuse Beverley, who was a mere baby.” Mrs. Temple never spoke the name of her dead son without a strange little pause before it. “And, my dear,” answered the general, making another feeble effort, “can you not now embrace the scriptural injunction?” “The Scripture says,” responded sternly this otherwise gentle and Christian soul, “that there is a time to love and a time to hate.” All this time, Judith, the young widow, had not said a word. She was slight and girlish-looking. Her straight dark brows were drawn with a single line, and in her eyes were gleams of mirth, of intelligence, of a love of life and its pleasures, that habitual restraint could not wholly subdue. When she rose, or when she sat down, or when she walked about, or when she arched her white neck, there was a singular grace, of which she was totally unconscious. Something about her suggested both love and modesty. But Fate, that had used her as if she were a creature without a soul, had married her to Beverley Temple—and within two months she was a widow. The shock, the horror of it, the willingness to idealize the dead man, had made her quietly assume the part of one who is done with this world. And Nature struggles vainly with Fate. Judith, in her black gown, and a widow’s cap over her chestnut hair, with her pretty air of wisdom and experience, fancied she had sounded the whole gamut of human love, grief, loss, and joy. Neither Millenbeck, nor anything but Beverley’s child and his father and mother and sister, mattered anything to her, she thought. Jacqueline, however, looked rebellious, but said nothing. Like her father, she was under the rule of this soft-voiced mother. But it was certainly very hard, thought Jacqueline, bitterly, that with Millenbeck beautifully fitted up, with a delightful young man like Jack Throckmorton—for Jacqueline had already endowed him with all the graces and virtues —and a not old man, a soldier too, should be right at their doors, and she never to have a glimpse of Millenbeck, nor a chance for walks and drives with them. Jacqueline sighed profoundly, and looked despairingly at Judith, who was the stay, the prop, the comforter of this undisciplined young creature. CHAPTER II. Within a few days Throckmorton and Jack Throckmorton—the traitor and the traitor’s son—had arrived at Millenbeck. Jacqueline could talk of nothing but the dawning splendors of the place. Delilah, who had an appetite for the marvelous scarcely inferior to Jacqueline’s, kept her on the rack with curiosity. “Dey done put Bruskins carpets all over de house,” she retailed solemnly into Jacqueline’s greedy ears, “an’ velvet sofys an’ cheers, an’ de lookin’-glasses from de garret ter de cellar. An’ dey got a white man name’ Sweeney—mighty po’ white trash, Simon Peter say—dat is a white nigger, an’ he talk mighty cu’rus. Simon Peter he meet him in de road, an’ dis heah Mis’ Sweeney he ax him ef dey was any Orrish gentmans ’bout here. Simon Peter he say he never heerd o’ no sich things ez Orrish gentmans, an’ Mis’ Sweeney he lif’ up he stick, an’ Simon Peter he took ter he heels an’ Mis’ Sweeney arter him, an’ Simon Peter ’low ef he hadn’t run down in de swamp, Mis’ Sweeney would er kilt him, sho’! An’ he doan’ min’ blackin’ de boots at Millenbeck an’ milk de cows, an’ den he dress up fine an’ wait on de table—an’ he a white man, too! He done tell some folks he wuz a soldier an’ fit, an’ he gwine ev’ywhar Marse George Throckmorton go, ef it twuz hell itself. Things is monst’ous fine at Millenbeck—dat dey is—an’ all fur dem two menfolks. Seem like God A’mighty done give all de good times ter de menfolks an’ all de hard times ter de womenfolks.” “Is that so, mammy?” asked Jacqueline, dolefully, who was simple of soul, and disposed to believe everything Delilah told her. “Dat ’tis, chile, ez sho’—ez sho’ ez God’s truf. De menfolks jes’ lives fur ter be frustratin’ an’ owdacious ter de po’ womenfolks, what byar de burdens. I tell Simon Peter so ev’y day; but dat nigger he doan’ worrit much ’bout what de po’ womenfolks has got ter orndure. Men is mighty po’, vain, weak creetures—I tell Simon Peter dat too ev’y day.” “Dat you does,” piously responded Simon Peter. The windows to Judith’s room possessed a strange fascination in those days for Jacqueline, because they looked straight out to Millenbeck. There she stood for hours, dreaming, speculating, thinking out aloud. [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] “Just think, Judith; there is a great big hall there that mamma says has a splendid dancing-floor!” “Jacky, stop thinking about Millenbeck and the dancing-floor. It doesn’t concern you, and you know that mother will never let you speak to either of the Throckmortons,” answered Judith. “Yes, I know it,” said Jacqueline, disconsolately. “The more’s the pity. Papa is dying to be friends with them when they come; but, of course, mamma won’t let him.” Jacqueline’s voice was usually high-pitched, rapid, and musical, but whenever she meant to be saucy she brought it down to great meekness and modesty. “Major Throckmorton, you know, is a widower. I don’t believe in grieving forever, like mamma. Suppose, now, Judith, you should—” But Judith, whose indulgence to Jacqueline rarely failed, now rose up with a pale face. “Jacqueline, you forget yourself.” Usually one rebuke of the sort was enough for Jacqueline, but this time it was not. She came and clasped Judith around the waist, and held her tight, looking into her eyes with a sort of timid boldness. “Just let me say one thing. Mamma is sacrificing all of us—you and me and papa—to—to Beverley—” “Hush, Jacqueline!” “No, I won’t hush. Judith, how long was it from the time you first met Beverley until you married him?” “Two months.” “And how much of that time were you together?” “Two—weeks,” answered Judith, falteringly. “And then you married him, and you had hardly any honeymoon, didn’t you?” “A very short one.” “And Beverley went away, and never came back.” There was a short silence. Jacqueline was nerving herself to say what had been burning upon her lips for long. “Then—then, Judith, he was so little in your life—he was so little of your life.” “But, Jacqueline, when one loves, it makes no difference whether it is a month or a year.” “Yes, when one loves; but, Judith, did you love Beverley that way?” Judith stood quite still and pale. The thought was then put in words that had haunted her. She no longer thought of answering Jacqueline, but of answering herself. Was it, indeed, because she was so young, so entirely alone in the world, and, in truth, had known so little of the man she married, that it became difficult for her to recall even his features; that she felt something like a pang of conscience when Mrs. Temple spoke his name; that this perpetual kindness to his father and his mother seemed a sort of reparation? Jacqueline, seeing the change in Judith’s face, went softly out of the room. Judith stood where Jacqueline had left her. Presently the door opened, and little Beverley came in, and made a dash for his mother. Judith seized him in her arms, and knelt down before him, and for the thousandth time tried to find a trace of his father in his face. But there was none. His eyes, his mouth, his expression, were all hers. Even the little bronze rings of hair that escaped from under her widow’s cap were faithfully reproduced on the child’s baby forehead. This strong resemblance to his mother was a thorn in Mrs. Temple’s side. She would have had the boy his father’s image. She would have had him grave and given to serious, thoughtful games, and to hanging about older people, such as her Beverley had been; but this merry youngster was always laughing when he was not crying, and was noisy and troublesome, as most healthy young animals are. Yet she adored him. The boy soon got tired of his mother’s arms around him, and uncomfortable under her tender, searching gaze. “I want to go to my mammy,” he lisped. Judith rose and led him by the hand down-stairs to Delilah. The child ran to his mammy with a shout of delight. His mother sometimes awed his baby soul with her gravity, when he had been naughty. Often he could not get what he wanted by crying for it, and got smart slaps upon his plump little palms when he cried. But with Delilah there was none of this. Delilah represented a beneficent Providence to him, which permitted naughtiness, and had no limit to jam and buttermilk. The Throckmortons had at last come, but had kept very close to Millenbeck for a week or two after their arrival in the county; but on one still, sunny September Sunday at Severn church, just as the Rev. Edmund Morford appeared out of the little robing-room, after having surveyed himself carefully in the mite of a looking-glass, and satisfied himself that his adornment was in keeping with his beauty, two gentlemen came in quietly at a side door, and took their seats in the first [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] vacant pew. They looked more like an elder and a younger brother than father and son. Both had the same square- shouldered, well-knit figures, not over middle height—the same contour of face, the same dark eyes. But it was a type which was at its best in maturity. Major Throckmorton was much the handsomer man of the two, although, as Judith Temple said some time after, when called upon to describe him, that handsome scarcely applied to him—he was rather distinguished than actually handsome—and she blushed unnecessarily as she said it. His hair and mustache were quite iron-gray, and he had the unmistakable look and carriage of a military man. The pew they took near the door was against the wall of the church, and in effect facing the Temple pew, where sat all the family from Barn Elms, including little Beverley, who looked a picture of childish misery, compelled to be preternaturally good, until sleep overcame him, and his yellow mop of hair fell over against his mother. Young Throckmorton, whose eyes were full of a sort of gay curiosity, let his gaze wander furtively over the congregation, and in two minutes knew every pretty face in the church. The two prettiest were unquestionably in the Temple pew. Without boldness or obtrusiveness, he managed to keep every glance and every motion in that pew in sight; and Jacqueline, by something like psychic force, knew it, and conveyed to him the idea that no glance of his escaped her. Nevertheless, she was very devout, and the only look she gave him was over the top of her prayer-book. Judith, with her large, clear gaze fixed on the clergyman, was in her way as conscious as Jacqueline. But Throckmorton saw nothing and nobody for a time, except that he was back again in Severn church after thirty years. How well he remembered it all!—the little dark gallery to the right of the pulpit, where in the old times Mrs. Temple and Mrs. Sherrard had sat, and sung the old, old hymns, their sweet, untrained voices rising into the dark, cobwebbed, resonant roof—voices as natural as that of the sweet, shy singing birds that twittered under the eaves of the old church, and built their nests safely and peacefully in the solemn yews and weeping-willows of the burying-ground close by. The September sunlight, as it sifted through the windows on the heads of the kneeling people—even the droning of the honey-bees outside, and the occasional incursion of a buzzing marauder through the windows—made him feel as if he were in a dream. It was not the recollection of a happy boyhood that had brought him back to Millenbeck. He remembered his grandfather as an old curmudgeon, the terror of his negroes and dependents, wasteful, a high liver, and a hard drinker; and himself a lonely boy, with neither mother nor sister, nor any sort of kindness to brighten his boyish soul, except those good women, Mrs. Temple and Mrs. Sherrard. Deep down in his being was that Anglo-Saxon love of the soil—the desire to return whence he came. He knew much of the world, and doubted if the experiment of returning to Millenbeck would succeed, but he at least determined to try it. He had no very serious notion of abandoning his profession, which he loved, while he grumbled at it, but he had had this project of a year’s leave, to be spent at Millenbeck, in his mind for a long, long time, and he wanted Jack to own the place. Himself the most unassuming of men, he cherished, unknown to those who knew him best, a strong desire that his name should be kept up in Virginia where it had been known so long. With scarcely a word on the subject spoken between father and son, Jack had the same drift of sentiment. Both had inherited from dead and gone generations a clinging to old things, old forms, that made itself felt in the strenuous modern life, and even a sturdy family pride that native good sense concealed. The Rev. Edmund Morford, along with his unfortunate excess of good looks, inherited a rich, strong voice, in which he rolled out the liturgy with great elocutionary effect. He saw the two strangers in the congregation, and at once divined who they were, and determined to give them a sermon that would show them what stuff parsons were made of in Virginia. He was much struck by the scrupulousness with which Major Throckmorton went through the service, which the Rev. Edmund attributed partly to his own telling way of rendering it. But in truth, Throckmorton neither saw nor heard the Rev. Edmund. He went through the forms with a certain military precision that very often passed for strict attention, as in this case, but he was still under the spell of the bygone time. Mr. Morford gave out a hymn, and the congregation rose, Throckmorton standing up straight like a soldier at attention. After a little pause, a voice rose. It was so sweet, so pure, that Throckmorton involuntarily turned toward the singer. It was Judith Temple, her clear profile well marked against her black veil, which also brought out the deep tints of her eyes and hair, and the warm paleness of her complexion. She sang quite composedly and unaffectedly, a few women’s voices, Mrs. Temple’s among the rest, joining in timidly, but her full soprano carried the simple air. Her head was slightly thrown back as she sang, and apparently she knew the words of the hymn by heart, as she did not once refer to the book held open before her. There is something peculiarly touching in female voices unaccompanied. Throckmorton thought so as he came out of his waking dream and glanced about him. In an instant he took in the pathetic story of war and ruin and loss that was written all over the assembled people. Many of the women were in mourning, and the men had a jaded, haggard, hopeless look. They had all been through with four years of harrowing, and they showed it. In the Temple pew Mrs. Temple and Judith were in the deepest mourning, and General Temple wore around his hat the black band that Mrs. Temple would never let him take off. Throckmorton’s eye rested for a moment in approval on Judith, and then on Jacqueline, but he looked at Jacqueline the longest. Then, after the hymn, Mr. Morford began his sermon. It was electrifying in a great many unexpected ways. Throckmorton, who knew something about most things, saw through Morford’s shallow Hebraism, and inwardly scoffed at the cheerful insufficiency with which the most abstruse biblical problems were attacked. Morford’s candor, confidence, and perfect good faith tickled Throckmorton; he felt like smiling once or twice, but, on looking around, he saw that everybody, except those who were asleep, took Morford at his own valuation; except the young woman with the widow’s veil about her clear-cut face, whose eyes, fixed attentively on Mr. Morford, had something quizzical in their expression. Throckmorton at once divined a sense of humor in that grave young widow that was conspicuously lacking in Jacqueline, who listened, bored but awed, to the preacher’s sounding periods. [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] The sermon was long and loud, and there was another hymn, sung in the simple and touching way that went to Throckmorton’s heart, and then a dramatic benediction, after the Rev. Edmund had announced that the next Sunday, “in the morning, the Lord will be with us, and in the evening the bishop. I need not urge you, beloved brethren, to be prepared for the bishop.” Then the congregation streamed out for their weekly gossip in the churchyard. Throckmorton and Jack went out, too. No one spoke to them, nor did they speak to any one. As a matter of fact, there were not half a dozen people there that Throckmorton would have recognized; but he was perfectly well known to everybody in the church, who, but for the uniform he had worn, would have greeted him cordially and generously, recalling themselves to him. But now they all held coldly and determinedly aloof. Throckmorton, who was slow to imagine offense, did not all at once take it in. But he would not lose a moment in speaking to Mrs. Temple, one of the few persons he recognized, and the one most endeared to him in his early recollections. The Temples, possibly to avoid him, had made straight for the iron gate of the churchyard, and stood outside the wall, waiting for the tumble-down carriage. Throckmorton quickened his pace, and went up to Mrs. Temple, carrying his hat in his hand. “Mrs. Temple, have you forgotten George Throckmorton?” he asked in his pleasant voice. Mrs. Temple turned to him with a somber look on her gentle face. “No, I have not forgotten you, George Throckmorton. But you and I are widely apart. Between us is a great gulf, and war and sorrow.” A deep flush dyed Throckmorton’s dark face. He was not prepared for this, but he could not all at once give up this friendship, the memory of which had lasted through all the years since his boyhood. “The war is over,” he said; “we can’t be forever at war.” “It is enough for you to say,” she replied. “You have your son. Where is mine?” “As well call me to account for the death of Abel. Dear Mrs. Temple, haven’t you any recollection of the time when you were almost the only friend I had? I have few enough left, God knows.” Here General Temple came to the front. In his heart he was anxious to be friends with Throckmorton, and did not despair of obtaining Mrs. Temple’s permission eventually. He held out his hand solemnly to Throckmorton. “I can shake hands with you, George Throckmorton,” he said, and then, turning to Mrs. Temple, “for the sake of what is past, my love, let us be friends with George Throckmorton.” Throckmorton, who in his life had met with few rebuffs, was cruelly wounded. In all those years he had cherished an ideal of womanly and motherly tenderness in Mrs. Temple, and she was the one person in his native county on whose friendship he counted. He looked down, indignant and abashed, and in the next moment looked up boldly and encountered Judith’s soft, expressive eyes fixed on him so sympathetically that he involuntarily held out his hand, saying: “You, at least, will shake hands with me.” Judith, who strove hard to bring her high spirit down to Mrs. Temple’s yoke, did not always succeed. She held out her hand impulsively. The spectacle of this manly man, rebuffed with Mrs. Temple’s strange power, touched her. “And this,” continued Throckmorton, out of whose face the dull red had not yet vanished, turning to Jacqueline, “must be a little one that I have not before seen.—Mrs. Temple, I can’t force you to accept my friendship, but I want to assure you that nothing—nothing can ever make me forget your early kindness to me.” Mrs. Temple opened her lips once or twice before words came. Then she spoke. “George Throckmorton, you think perhaps that, being a soldier, you know what war is. You do not. I, who sat at home and prayed and wept for four long years, for my husband and my son, and to whom only one came back, when I had sent forth two—I know what it is. But God has willed it all. We must forgive. Here is my hand—and show me your son.” Throckmorton, whose knowledge of Mrs. Temple was intimate, despite that long stretch of years, knew what even this small compromise had cost her. He motioned to Jack, who was surveying the scene, surprised and rather angry, from a little distance. The young fellow came up, and Mrs. Temple looked at him very hard, a film gathering in her eyes. “I am glad you have such a son. Such was our son.” The carriage was now drawn up, and General Temple looked agonizingly at Mrs. Temple. He wanted her to invite Throckmorton to Barn Elms, but Mrs. Temple said not one word. Throckmorton, in perfect silence, helped the ladies into the carriage. He did not know whether to be gratified that Mrs. Temple had conceded so much, or mortified that she had conceded so little. Jacqueline in the carriage gave him a friendly little nod. Judith leaned forward and bowed distinctly and politely. General Temple, holding his hat stiffly against his breast, remarked in his most grandiose manner: “As two men who have fought on opposing sides—as two generous enemies, my dear Throckmorton—I offer you my hand. I did my best against you [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] in my humble way”—General Temple never did anything in a humble way in his life, and devoutly believed that the exploits of Temple’s Brigade had materially influenced the result—“but, following the example of our immortal chieftain, Robert Lee, I say again, here is my hand.” A twinkle came into Throckmorton’s eye. This was the same Beverley Temple of twenty-five years ago, only a little more magniloquent than ever and a little more under Mrs. Temple’s thumb. Throckmorton, repressing a smile, shook hands cordially. “Neither of us has any apologies to make, general,” he said. “I think that ugly business is over for good. I feel more friendly toward my own unfortunate people now than ever before. Good-by.” The general then made a stately ascent into the carriage, banged the door, and rattled off. Short as the scene had been, it made a deep impression upon Judith Temple. Throckmorton’s dignity—the tender sentiment that he had cherished for his early friends—struck her forcibly. The very tones of his voice, his soldierly carriage, his dark, indomitable eye, were so impressed upon her imagination that, had she never seen him again, she would never have forgotten him. It was an instant and powerful attraction that had made her hold out her hand and smile at him. Throckmorton, without trying the experiment of hunting up any more old friends, turned to walk home. It was a good four-mile stretch, and usually he stepped out at a smart gait that put Jack to his trumps to keep up with. But to-day he sauntered along so slowly, through the woods and fields with his hat over his eyes and his hands behind him, that Jack lost patience and struck off ahead, leaving Throckmorton alone, much to his relief. Throckmorton wanted to think it all over. In his heart there was not one grain of resentment toward Mrs. Temple. He thought he understood the workings of her strong but simple nature perfectly well, and he did not doubt the ultimate goodness of her heart. And General Temple—Throckmorton had heard something of the general’s magnificent incapacity during the war—the bare idea of General Temple as a commander made him laugh. How sweet were Mrs. Beverley’s eyes, and how demure she looked when she dropped them at some particularly solemn absurdity of the clergyman, as if she were afraid somebody would see the tell-tale gleam in them! The little girl, though, was the most fascinating creature he h...