Throckmorton Part 17

"I do not think forty-four is old," said Judith, indignant at Jacqueline's tame submission to this sort of talk. "I think, with most women, Major Throckmorton would have the advantage over younger men."

As soon as she said this, she repented. Freke glanced at her with a look so amused and so exasperating that she could have burst into tears of shame on the spot.

"Come, Jacqueline," cried Freke, rising, "let us go for a walk. I don't know whether Throckmorton will permit this after you are married.

Marriage, my dear little girl, is more of a yoke than a garland. I am well out of mine, thank Heaven!"

Judith cast a beseeching look at Jacqueline, but Freke had fixed his eyes commandingly on her. That was enough. Jacqueline rose and went out to get her hat.

Judith sat quite silent. She rarely spoke to Freke when she could help it.

"What do you think of this ridiculous marriage?" he asked.

"I, at least, don't think it ridiculous. There are incongruities much worse than a difference in age."

"Yes, I understand," a.s.sented Freke, with meaning. "I have found it so.

If I were as free as Throckmorton, though, I would be in no hurry to put my head in the noose."

"You said just now you were free."

"Did I? Well, in fact I am free in some States and not in others. You people down here seem to regard me as an escaped felon. That sort of thing doesn't exist any longer in civilized communities." Judith made no reply. She hated Freke with a kind of unreasoning hatred that put a guard upon her lips, lest she should be tempted to say something rash.

And in a moment Jacqueline was back, and, with a defiant look at Judith, went off with Freke. Freke caught a glance from Judith's eyes as they went out. The fact that it expressed great anger and contempt for him did not make him overlook that her eyes were remarkably full of fire and the turn of her head something beautiful.

"Judith is a thoroughbred--there's no mistake about that," he said to Jacqueline--and kept on talking about Judith until he reduced Jacqueline to a jealous silence, and almost to tears--when a few words of praise restored her to complete good humor. Throckmorton never played off on her like this--it was quite opposed to his directness and straightforwardness.

Freke was more constantly at Barn Elms than ever before. It often occurred to Judith that he took pains to keep secret from Throckmorton all the time he pa.s.sed with Jacqueline. Sometimes she even suspected that Jacqueline had some share in keeping Throckmorton in the dark, so constant was Freke's presence when Throckmorton was absent, and so unvarying was his absence when Throckmorton was present.

After a while, though, a hint of the engagement got abroad in the county, and the people generally, who had never relaxed in the slightest degree their forbidding exterior to Throckmorton, now somewhat included the Temples in the ban. Throckmorton, engrossed with his own affairs, had ceased to care for himself, being quite content with the few people around him who took him into their homes. But he felt it acutely for Jacqueline, who told him, with childish cruelty, without thinking of the pang she inflicted, of the strange coolness that all at once seemed to have fallen between her and her acquaintances. And Judith was sure that Freke put notions of that kind and of every kind into the girl's head.

Once, after one of Freke's daily visits--for, if anything, he came oftener than Throckmorton--Jacqueline said, quite disconsolately, to Judith:

"Freke says I shall never have any more girl friends after I am married.

Throckmorton is too old; and, besides, the people in this county will never, never really recognize him."

"This county is not all the world--and, Jacqueline, pray, pray don't listen to anything Freke has to say."

"I know you don't like Freke."

"I hate him."

Judith, when she said this, looked so handsome and animated that Throckmorton, entering at that moment, paid her a pretty compliment, which she received first with so much confusion and then with so much haughtiness that Throckmorton was as completely puzzled as the night he offered to kiss her hand, and concluded that Judith was as freakish as all women are.

Among the smaller irritations which Throckmorton had to bear, at this strange time, was Jack's sly rallying. Jack a.s.sumed his father to be a love-sick octogenarian. Anything less love-sick than Throckmorton's simple and manly affection, or less suggestive of age than his alert and vigorous maturity, would be hard to find. But Jack had always possessed the power of tormenting his father where women were concerned--the natural penalty, perhaps, of having a son so little younger than himself. Jack felt infinite respect for Jacqueline, and never once indulged in a joke calculated to really rouse Throckmorton; but some occasions were too good for him to spare the major. Such conversations as these were frequent:

"Major, are you going over to Barn Elms this evening?"

"No, I was there this morning."

"I understand, sir, that two visits a day, when the young lady is in the immediate neighborhood, is the regulation thing."

"You are at liberty to understand what you please. With youngsters like yourself, probably three visits would hardly be enough."

"I have been told that these things affect all ages alike."

Throckmorton scowled, but scowls were wasted on Jack, whose particular object was to put the major in a bad humor; in which design, however, he rarely succeeded.

In spite of the silence that had been maintained by the Barn Elms people regarding the engagement, Mrs. Sherrard, who had what is vulgarly called a nose for news, found it out by some occult means, and Throckmorton was held up in the road, as he was riding peacefully along, to answer her inquiries.

"I think you and Jacky Temple are going to be married soon, from what I hear," was her first aggressive remark, putting her head out of the window of her ramshackly old carriage.

"Do you?" responded Throckmorton, with laughing eyes. "You must think me a deuced lucky fellow."

Mrs. Sherrard did not speak for a moment or two, and a cold chill struck Throckmorton, while the laugh died out of his eyes.

"That's as may be," she replied, diplomatically; "but the idea of your marching about, thinking you are deceiving _me_!"

"I am young and bashful, you know, Mrs. Sherrard."

"You are not young, but you are younger than you are bashful. You always were one of those quiet dare-devils--the worst kind, to my mind."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"And Jane Temple--ha! ha!"

Throckmorton joined in Mrs. Sherrard's fine, ringing laugh.

"A Yankee son-in-law!" screamed Mrs. Sherrard, still laughing; then she became grave, and beckoned Throckmorton, sitting straight and square in his saddle, to come closer, so the black driver could not hear. "Jane, you know," she said, confidentially, "was always daft about the war after Beverley's death; and, let me tell you, Beverley was a fine, tall, handsome, brave, silly, commonplace fellow as ever lived. Judith has more brains and wit than all the Temple men put together, and most of the women. Hers was as clear a case of a winged thing that can soar married to a Muscovy drake as ever I saw. Luckily, she hadn't an opportunity to wake up to it fully, before he was killed; and then, just like a hot-headed, romantic thing, she wrapped herself in c.r.a.pe, and has given up her whole life to Jane and General Temple, and Jacky."

Throckmorton felt a certain restraint in speaking of Judith to Mrs.

Sherrard, who had a.s.sumed that it was his duty to fall in love with Judith instead of Jacqueline. So he flicked a fly off his horse's neck and remained silent.

"I do wish," resumed Mrs. Sherrard, pettishly, "that Jane Temple would act like a woman of sense, and send for me over to Barn Elms, and show me Jacky's wedding things."

"Very inconsiderate of Jane, I am sure. If it would relieve your mind at all, you might come to Millenbeck, and I would be delighted to show you my coats and trousers. They are very few. I always have a plenty of s.h.i.+rts and stockings, but my outside wardrobe isn't imposing."

"I don't take the slightest interest in your clothes. You don't dress half as much as Jack does."

"Of course not; I can't afford it."

"One thing is certain. If you have any sort of a wedding at Barn Elms, they'll have to send over and borrow my teaspoons. There hasn't been a party at Barn Elms for forty years, that they haven't done it, and I always borrow Jane Temple's salad-bowl and punch-ladles whenever I have company."

"I don't think there will be any wedding feast there," answered Throckmorton.

"Jacky wants one, _I_ know," said Mrs. Sherrard, very knowingly. "Jacky loves a racket."

"Quite naturally--at her age."

"Oh, yes, of course--her age, as you say. I shall tell Edmund Morford to pay you a pastoral visit, as he always does upon the eve of marriages, to instruct you in the duties of the married state."

"Then I shall tell Edmund Morford that I know considerably more about my duties in the premises than he does; and I'll shut him up before he has opened his mouth, as Sweeney would say."