Throckmorton Part 24

Judith thought that Jacqueline, in her simplicity, had taken it literally; but she had not.

"Once, Throckmorton read some in this book to me. He said that meant human life--that little moment. Why can't people let other people be comfortable in that least s.p.a.ce, instead of--of--killing them as--being so unkind to them?" Jacqueline stopped. Her mind was ever working on that deep resentment against her county people. "And Throckmorton, too,"

she continued, after a pause, "you know, Judith, how n.o.ble he is--and see how they have treated him!"

"My dearest," answered Judith, "you don't understand. These people are really kind and tender-hearted; but they move very slowly--and they have queer prejudices--notions--that they will die with, and die for, I think; but don't think about that--think about getting well, and running about again with Beverley. You ought to see him, trotting around down-stairs, saying: 'Where is my Jacky? I want my Jacky.' He was so naughty to-day that Delilah threatened to whip him, and even mother had to take a stand against him. He is getting thoroughly spoiled while I am up here with you."

Jacqueline smiled slightly, but soon returned to watching the gloomy day without. At twilight she would not have the shutters closed, but lay striving to catch the last fading glimpses of the somber daylight.

Judith began to feel an intense longing for Throckmorton to come.

Jacqueline, too, who had been so strangely forgetful and neglectful of Throckmorton until lately, had asked a dozen times that day, when it was possible for him to get there, and what if he should miss the boat, and many other questions. About seven o'clock Judith went down to tea, leaving Delilah with Jacqueline.

Delilah, sitting up black and solemn, listened to Jacqueline's faint and sorrowful talk.

"Doan' you fret, honey, 'bout dem blackbirds, an' dem peach-blossoms, an' dem little lambs out in de cold. De Lord gwi' teck keer on 'em. He gwi' meck de sun ter s.h.i.+ne, an' de win' ter blow; an' He gwi' down in de rain an' de gloomerin' fur ter fin' de po' los' sheep. He ain' gwi'

lef 'em out d'yar ter deyselves. He gwi' tote 'em home outen' de rain an' de darkness."

"Do you think so, mammy?"

"I knows. .h.i.t, chile."

Down-stairs, General and Mrs. Temple, with little Beverley and Judith, were all that were present around the table. Not yet even had Mrs.

Temple begun to be alarmed about Jacqueline, who had not had a pain or an ache.

Jacqueline's vacant chair struck Judith more painfully than usual.

Scarcely had she taken her place at the table, when she saw Delilah peer in at the door, a queer, ashy tinge over her black face. Judith rose and went out quietly, Mrs. Temple looking surprised, but saying nothing.

Judith, Mrs. Temple thought, coddled Jacqueline rather too much for her own good, so Kitty Sherrard and Dr. Wortley both said.

"Miss Judy," whispered Delilah, "Miss Jacky is a-gwine--she done start on de road--"

Judith, without a word, flew up-stairs. Jacqueline lay, scarcely breathing, her face perfectly white, her dark and beautiful eyes wide open. Judith raised her up, Jacqueline protesting feebly.

"Judith, it is come! I feel it. I am not at all frightened. It was those cruel people at Mrs. Sherrard's party--"

"Don't--don't say that, Jacqueline! You are only a little faint and discouraged. Here is Delilah coming."

"Tell Throckmorton I tried to live until he came, but my breath won't hold out any longer, and my heart has scarcely beat at all for a week, it seems to me."

Judith made a sign to Delilah to go for Mrs. Temple. Scarcely was she out of the room, before Jacqueline's head fell back on Judith's shoulder. Judith, brave as she was, began to tremble and to weep.

"I did so want to see Throckmorton, to tell him something. I wanted to say to him--Judith--"

Mrs. Temple came in swiftly, followed by the general. Jacqueline had strength enough left to hold out a thin little hand. A smile like moonlight pa.s.sed over her face. She gasped once, and all was over.

CHAPTER XIII.

The next night at midnight there was a solemn stir, a painful and heart-breaking commotion, at Barn Elms. Throckmorton had come. He had indeed missed the boat, and had driven seventy miles rather than wait a day. Mrs. Temple, as when Beverley died, had shut herself up in the "charmber" with General Temple. Most people thought it was to comfort General Temple, but in those two dreadful tragedies of her life it was General Temple who comforted Mrs. Temple. Both parents felt something like remorse in their grief. They had been good parents after their lights, but the wayward, capricious Jacqueline, although their child, was outside of their experience. Her nature had eluded both of them.

"Ole ma.r.s.e," said Delilah, in a solemn whisper to Judith, sitting in Jacqueline's peaceful room, "he set by mistis. He hole her han' an' he read de Bible ter her, an' he tell her she ain' got no reproachments fur ter make. Mistis, she jes' lay in the bed, ez white ez de wall, an' her eyes wide open, a-hole'in' ole ma.r.s.e like she wuz drowndin'. It seem like ole ma.r.s.e ain' got no sort o' idee, 'cep 'tis ter comfort mistis.

She do grieve so arter her chillen. She ain' got none now."

To Judith, whose grief was poignant and complex, was left the task of watching by Jacqueline. With tender superst.i.tion, she got out the wedding-gown--it could be put to no other use--and she and Delilah put it on Jacqueline, deftly hiding the blood-spots.

"My pretty little missy," said Delilah, smoothing down the frock with her hard black hand. "Arter all, you gwi' w'yar dis pretty little frock Miss Judy done wuk for you to git married in."

And to Judith also fell the task of showing Freke into the white and darkened room.

As they looked into each other's eyes, and realized that, after all, they were the chiefest mourners, Judith's old enmity melted away.

"You and I have struggled for this child's soul," he said. "Had you but let me see her--had she but gone with me--she would be alive this day."

"And wretched!" Judith could not help saying.

"No--most happy. I understood her better than anybody else. It was that which gave me my power over her. She wanted nothing in this world except to be loved."

He went in and stayed so long that Judith opened the door softly two or three times. Sometimes, by the dim light, he was kneeling by the bed, holding the cold little hand in his. Again, he sat on a chair, stroking the bright hair that rippled over the forehead. Judith had not the heart to speak to him until midnight, when the sound of Throckmorton's step in the hall told her he had come. She went in and said to Freke hurriedly, but not unkindly, "You must go--Throckmorton is here."

"Then I will go," he said. But with a queer sort of triumph in his voice he added: "She never was Throckmorton's, living or dead. She was mine as far as her heart and her soul and her will went." And so saying, he went down the stairs and out and away, without meeting Throckmorton.

Judith went down into the dining-room, where Throckmorton sat before the decaying fire, with only the light of two tall candles to pierce the darkness. He arose silently and followed her. At the door of the room his courage, which Judith had thought invincible, seemed suddenly to leave him. He, the strong man, turned pale, and clung to the weak woman's arm. Something of the divine pity in Judith's face went to his soul. He stayed only a few minutes. It came to Judith, like a flash, that his grief was not like Freke's. Throckmorton pitied Jacqueline.

Freke pitied himself, for the sharp misery of life without her. When Throckmorton came out, Judith went in and resumed her watch.

The day of the funeral was as stormy as the day of Jacqueline's death.

But for that, the whole county would have been at the funeral. Something of the truth had leaked out, and the people were conscience-stricken.

Poor Jacqueline, who two weeks before had in vain asked for a little human pity from them, now had her memory deluged with it. But the storm was so violent that but few persons could be present. As Judith stood at the head of the small grave in the wind and the rain, listening to Edmund Morford's rich voice, now touched with real feeling, she glanced toward Freke, standing by himself, with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed devouringly upon the coffin. As the first damp clods fell resounding on the lid, he said to himself: "Jacqueline!

Jacqueline!"

Throckmorton, with folded arms and his iron jaw set, gave no sign of his feelings through his stern composure. Judith's heart was wrenched as if she were burying her own child. When they left the grave, Freke remained standing alone, his hat off, and the sleety rain pelting his bare head.

At that sight Judith, for the first time, forgave him from her heart.

CHAPTER XIV.

Throckmorton's year of leave was not up, yet he went immediately back to his post. Everything that had happened to him in the last six months had been so unreal, so out of all his previous experiences, that he needed the every-day routine of duty to enable him to get his bearings. He wanted to find out if he himself was changed. There was certainly a change in him, which everybody saw; but he was not a man to be questioned. He went about his duty, quietly and self-containedly. He had always found a plenty to do, and wondered at the idleness that he sometimes saw around him; and now he was busier than ever. He was not a philanthropic meddler, and was as loath to offer his advice unasked to a soldier as to an officer, but he earnestly desired, now more than ever, to be of help to his fellow-men, and Throckmorton's help was always efficient because it never hurt the self-respect of those who received it. Certain of the non-commissioned officers at his post were competing for a commission. To his surprise and gratification, he found them anxious to be instructed by him. So he turned schoolmaster, and patiently and laboriously, night after night, gave them the advantage of all he knew. Only one got the commission, but all were qualified when Throckmorton got through with them. He was not any less alert and attentive than before, but in all his waking moments, when his mind was not imperatively drawn to other things, he was thinking over those six months at Millenbeck--the hopes with which he went back; the strangeness of finding himself under the ban among his own people; the renewal of the link with Barn Elms, after thirty years' absence; his complete infatuation with Jacqueline--and, out of it all, rose Judith's face. How hard had been her lot; and how strange it was that he had made confidences to her, and that, of all the women he had ever known, she was the only one of whose sympathy he had ever felt the need! He considered his somewhat barren life--his reserved habits--and sometimes thought Heaven was kind to Jacqueline in not giving her to him, for he could not bend his nature to any woman's--the woman must conform to him; and it was not in Jacqueline to be anything but what Nature had made her.

Jack was off at the university, and Millenbeck was shut up, silent and deserted.

Freke was gone. He disappeared apparently from the face of the earth. He wanted neither to see nor hear anything of anybody connected with Jacqueline. Throckmorton, on the contrary, clung to the ties at Barn Elms.

But to Judith Temple life had become infinitely sadder and poorer than ever before. She had caught one glimpse of paradise, and that had changed the whole face of life for her, and she seemed all at once to be very much alone. But in one sense she was less alone than ever before.

Mrs. Temple's will and courage and purpose seemed gone. She changed strangely after Jacqueline's death. She, who had once silently resented the slightest forgetfulness of Beverley, now seemed to feel acutely that the living should not be sacrificed to the dead. She began to urge Judith to go from home; to take off her mourning at the end of a year.

Judith gently protested. The truth was that, although Mrs. Temple had at last come out of that strange forgetfulness of Jacqueline and mourned as other mothers do, Jacqueline took nothing out of her life. With Judith it was as if her child had been taken. She could not pa.s.s Jacqueline's empty room without remembering how she would waylay her, and draw her in to sit by the fire and dream and romance. She could not sew or read or do anything without feeling the loss of the childish companions.h.i.+p. Even when she laid aside her seriousness for her child and romped and played with the boy, he was apt to say, "I wish Jacky would come back and play with me again."