Читать книгу Throckmorton - Molly Elliot Seawell - Страница 4

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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.

“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 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.

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 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 had seen for long. How strangely and how pitifully altered was the congregation of Severn church from the merry prosperous country gentry he remembered so long ago! And how quiet, how still was life there! All his usual every-day life was shut out from him. Within the circle of that perfect repose nothing disquieting could come. He stopped in the country lane and listened. Nothing broke the solemn calm except the droning of the locusts in the September noon. Warm as it was, there was a hint of autumn in the atmosphere. Occasionally the clarion cry of a hawk circling in the blue air pierced the silence.

“This, then, is peace,” said Throckmorton to himself, and thought of the year of idleness and repose before him. “Nothing ever happens here,” he continued, thinking. “Even the tragedy of the war was at a distance. As Mrs. Temple says, the men went forth, and those that came back will go forth no more.”

Then he began to think over the way in which the people had completely ignored him in the churchyard, where they stopped and gossiped with each other, eying him askance. He knew perfectly well the estimate they put upon him. He could have supplied the very word—“traitor.” This made him feel a sort of bitterness, which he consoled with the reflection—

“Most men of principle have to suffer for those principles at some time or other.”

By this time he was at his own grounds, and Sweeney’s honest Irish face, glowing with indignation, was watching out for him.

“Be the powers,” snorted Sweeney to the black cook, “the murtherin’ rebels took no more notice of the major than if he’d been an ould hat—an’ he’s a rale gintleman, fit ter dine with the Prisident, as he often has, an’ all the g’yurls has been tryin’ to hook him fur twinty years, bless their hearts, an’ the major as hard as a stone to the dear things, every wan of ’em!”