Throckmorton: A Novel

by Molly Elliot Seawell

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.