Читать книгу Throckmorton - Molly Elliot Seawell - Страница 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jane Temple,” answered Mrs. Sherrard, “you may add by the human law, too; but some women—”

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

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

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

“But Judith and Jacqueline will come.”

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

“I don’t go to parties, Mrs. Sherrard.”

“I know; but you must come to this one.”

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

“If Judith doesn’t go, I—I—sha’n’t go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“De womenfolks kin mos’ in gen’ally git dey way,” cautiously answered Simon Peter.

“Yes, dey kin; an’ dey is gwine ter, ’long as menfolks is so triflin’ an’ owdacious as dey is.”

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

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

“But I want her to go, mamma. You can’t imagine how I long to go to this party. It is so very, very dull at Barn Elms—and I have my new white frock.”

“Judith has no frock.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mamma, I have been thinking about the party.”

“So have I, child.”

“And may we go?”

Mrs. Temple paused before she spoke.

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

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

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

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

“Are we?” answered Judith. A gleam came into her eyes very like Jacqueline’s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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