Throckmorton: A Novel

by Molly Elliot Seawell

One night, two winters after Jacqueline had gone away, Judith, who every night before going to bed went to her window, and, drawing the curtain, looked long toward Millenbeck, saw a bright light shining from the hall-door and two of the lower windows of the house. Every night, as she gazed at it, she had seen it black and tenantless, and utterly deserted; but, now—

“Throckmorton has come!” she said to herself.

Next morning he came over early to see them. He found General Temple the same General Temple—courteous and verbose. His health being very good, he was an Episcopalian for the time being; but, whenever the gout appeared, he had his old way of lapsing into Presbyterianism. Mrs. Temple was the same, and yet not the same. Throckmorton saw a change in her. She, the most unyielding of women, had become easy and indulgent. Simon Peter and Delilah came in to speak to him, and a wifely rebuke, administered in the pantry, was distinctly audible to Throckmorton:

“Huccome you ain’ taken off dat ole coat, nigger, an’ put on dat one mistis give you, fur ter speak ter Marse George Throckmorton? He su’t’ny will think we all’s po’, ef you keep on dat er way.”

“We is po’, but we is first quality, ’oman!”

Judith, who had great self-command, could control her eyes, her voice, her manner; but happiness, the outlaw, at seeing Throckmorton again, brought the red blood surging to her cheeks. Throckmorton, who was exactly like his old self, was surprised and inwardly agitated at it. They spoke some tender words of Jacqueline, all of them sitting together in the old-fashioned drawing-room. Her little chair was in its old place, but Judith sat in it; and even the ragged footstool on which Jacqueline had toasted her little feet was near it. Throckmorton noticed all these things with tenderness in his dark eyes. He was a little grayer than before, but he was the same erect, soldierly figure; he had the same simple but commanding dignity.

He walked home in a curious state of emotion. In those two years he had not ceased thinking deeply over that short episode, so full of happiness and pain—the happiness a little unreal, and vexed with many pangs; the pain very real, but with strange suggestions that, after all, the happiness held more possibilities of wretchedness. He could think, for Jacqueline’s sake, how much better off she was, lying so peacefully in the old grave-yard, than if she had lived, so weak, so captivating, so unthinking. What would life have been to her? And so, at forty-six, after having experienced more than most men, he began the analysis of his own emotions, and realized that all he had known of love was perilously like a mirage. He had entered into a fool’s paradise, but he knew that he of all men could least be satisfied there. His reason, his intellect, always overmastered him in the end; and what was there in this bewitching child to satisfy either? Jacqueline, young, was a dream; Jacqueline, old, was a fantasm. All this had come to him soon after Jacqueline’s death, in that period of self-searching that followed. But, when he had got thus far, which was some time before his return to Millenbeck, a great change came upon him. He began to feel a sort of acute disappointment. He had loved and suffered much for that which he felt would not have made him happy had he gained it. All that love, grief, passion, had been vain; here he checked himself; the memory of his girl-wife was sacred from even his own questionings; and so was that later love, but the necessity for checking himself told volumes. And then, by slow degrees, the image of Judith Temple had stolen upon him. It was very gradual, it was many months in coming, but, when at last it dawned upon him, it was a sort of glorious surprise. How stupid, how blind had he been! Where were his doubts and questionings? Could anybody doubt Judith Temple’s sympathy and understanding? He remembered the quaint words of the Jewish king, “The heart of her husband doth safely trust.” He had seen enough of the way these weaker women had striven to bend him, but Judith had the beautiful charm of bending herself. She could be whatever the man she loved desired her to be. Throckmorton at once felt that any man married to Judith Temple would indeed be free, and how sweet would it be to see that proud spirit that yielded but seldom bend to his will! That homage, so rare and precious, was what women of her type paid to the master-passion. Most women that he had ever seen yielded to the predominant influence; but women like Judith Temple bent their heads and smiled and played at humility, but yielded not one inch of their soul’s standing-ground until the moment came. Throckmorton, who possessed true masculine courage, admired this kind of feminine bravery. He felt that to conquer such a woman would be like capturing a Roman standard. And how utterly those proud women surrendered when they did surrender! He could fancy Judith’s brave pretenses melting away; how charming would be her sweet inexperience! How quickly she would persuade herself that there was nothing so wise, true, just as love! Throckmorton, although he had silenced his discernment, had never strangled it, and he began to study and know Judith. But there was no suspicion in his mind that she cared anything for him; and, when he made up his mind to return to Millenbeck and see her again, he was anything but sanguine. He felt that if he failed it would make infinitely more difference to him than anything that had ever happened to him in life before. He was absolutely afraid, and fear, he knew, when it came to men like him, meant something overmastering. Throckmorton sighed when he realized his want of courage. He knew it would be forthcoming in an emergency; he had felt that in battle, where his first tremors never made him doubt for an instant that when the time came to use his courage it would be there; but it was a new thing to fear his fate at the hands of a woman. But the woman had become much more to him than any other woman had ever been; she was so much to him that it rather appalled him.

Nevertheless, anxieties or no anxieties, he went about winning Judith with the same coolness and deliberation he did everything else. He had two months’ leave, and he determined to spend it all at Millenbeck. Judith might break his heart, but she should not defraud him of those months in her society that he had promised himself for a good while before. For a long time past in his pleasant quarters at his post, in his regular round of duty, in the part he took in social life, he had comforted himself with the idea that, whether he was destined to this greater happiness or not, he would at least see this woman of all women; he would hear her soft voice, listen to her talk, seasoned with a dainty, womanly wit. Nobody should deprive him of that. He began to remember with a frown Jack’s turpitude about Judith’s letters. As soon as Jack found out that his father wanted to see those friendly, kindly letters, he made great ado about showing them, playing the major very much as he would a peculiarly game and warlike salmon. The cast in Throckmorton’s eye was apt to come out so savagely at these times that he was, as Jack said, positively cross-eyed. But after Jack had worked him up into a silent rage, he would then produce the letters. Throckmorton had always taken women’s letters as highly indicative, and Judith’s were so refined, so sparkling in spite of the narrow round in which she lived, that Throckmorton’s countenance immediately cleared and the cast disappeared from his eye as soon as he had got hold of one of these cherished epistles, all of which had been by no means lost on Jack.

Throckmorton went and came between Barn Elms and Millenbeck in the most natural and neighborly way in the world. He brought books over to Judith, and often read aloud at Barn Elms in the evenings. General Temple, still hard at work on the History of Temple’s Brigade, which now approached its seventh volume, found Throckmorton a mine of information. A soldier from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, Throckmorton had a queer diffidence about speaking of his profession, in marked contrast to General Temple, who declaimed the science of war with same easy confidence with which Edmund Morford explained the inscrutable mysteries of religion. As Throckmorton watched General Temple stalking up and down the quaint old drawing-room, haranguing and expounding, the idea that this man had been intrusted with the fate of battle perfectly staggered him. His sense of humor was keen, and, between his professional horror of General Temple’s methods and the utter absurdity of the whole thing, he would be convulsed with silent laughter. Judith, the picture of demureness, would give him a glance that would almost create an explosion. With much simplicity General Temple would add:

“At that time, my dear Throckmorton, I was unfortunately separated from my command. I conceive it to be the duty of the commander of troops to set them an example of personal courage, and so I occupied a slightly exposed position.”