Throckmorton: A Novel

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“Go along, Jane Temple! You have no eyes in your head where ministers of the gospel are concerned. Edmund is perfectly harmless—that’s one comfort.”

“I wish I could say the same of Temple Freke,” Mrs. Temple rejoined, dolefully.

It would be a week or two yet before Freke could take possession of Wareham. Some beds and tables and sheets and towels had to be procured, and meanwhile he stayed on at Barn Elms. It would not have taken a very astute person to see what the charm was. It was Judith.

When the knowledge first came to these two people—to Judith, that Freke’s eyes followed her continually; that, as if by some power beyond his will, his chair was always next hers, his ear always alert to catch her lightest word—to Freke, that this young country-woman, with her spirited, expressive face, her untutored singing—for music was one of his weak points, or strong ones, as the case might be—her gentle sarcasm when he essayed a little sentiment, pretty and tender enough to please a woman who knew twice as much as she; that at first sight, without an effort, she had conquered his bold spirit—it is hard to say which was the most vexed and disgusted. Judith found it easy enough to play the inconsolable widow where a man who aroused a positive antagonism like Freke was concerned, and denounced him in her own mind as a wretch for daring to fall in love with her. And Freke—after New York women and Creole women, French, Spanish, Russian, English, and Italian women—to have been loved and petted, and virtually made free of women’s hearts; that this unsophisticated Virginia girl, who had never seen six men in her life, should simply take him off his feet, and that, without knowing it—was simply infuriating. In the privacy of his bedroom, as he smoked his last cigar before turning in, he swore at himself with a self-deprecation that was thoroughly genuine. What did he want to marry again for, anyway? Hadn’t he had all he wanted of that pastime? And, of course, being a divorced man, Judith would see him chopped into little pieces before she would marry him—and then the staggering thought that, even if he were not divorced, the odds were against her marrying him at all—it was altogether maddening. But he did not lose his head completely. Judith’s indifference—nay, dislike—saved to him his discretion. But had she warmed to him for one little moment—Freke, in thinking over this sweet impossibility, lay back in his chair and watched the smoke curling upward, and was lost in a delicious reverie—when suddenly, the utter preposterousness of it came to him, and he threw the cigar into the fire with a savage energy that nearly wrenched his arm off. No, the little devil—for he was not choice of epithets in regard to this woman—would throw him away with as little conscience and remorse as he threw that cigar away! Like all men of many love-affairs, he regarded love-making as an æsthetic amusement; and while it was absolutely necessary for its perfection that the woman should be desperately in earnest—for Freke did not mind a tragic tinge being given to the matter—it was nonsense for a man to permit himself to be drawn into heroics—and yet—but for the indifference of this girl, who was always half laughing at him—he would not answer for any folly he might commit.

Then there was Jacqueline. She exactly suited him as a victim to his charms, sardonically expressing it to himself. She, too, was not particularly impressed with him as yet, but that was due to her ignorance. He could easily enlighten her, and she would be led like a slave by him; he could make her believe anything. So, in default of Judith, he might as well amuse himself with Jacqueline; and, by resolutely concealing his gigantic folly, he would in the end overcome it. But he felt like a man who, having a head to stand champagne and brandy and absinthe and every other intoxication, comes across something that looks as harmless as water, but which sets his brain on fire and makes him a madman.

The general and Mrs. Temple saw nothing; a man might have made love to Judith and have run away with her under their very noses before they would have realized that it was possible for any man to dare falling in love with Beverley’s widow; and if Jacqueline’s eyes saw anything, she kept it wisely to herself.

Freke certainly added a new and picturesque element to their lives; even Judith could not deny that, although she habitually denied Freke the possession of any of the graces as well as the virtues. But that Freke was a wonderful, a gifted, a fascinating talker, she was forced to admit. His conversation was quite different from Throckmorton’s manly plainness of speech, who, with more brains than Freke, had not them as readily soluble in talk. Judith was acute enough to see the difference between the two men—one the man of conversation, and the other the man of action. Throckmorton knew many things, and one thing surpassingly well—his profession. Freke excelled in conversation; what he knew was imposing, but what he could do was not. However, he had not only traveled, but he had observed as well as read. He never made himself the hero of his own stories; and there was a sparkle in his eyes, an animation that gave a deeper tone to his voice, and Judith, in her dull and colorless life, could not but feel the charm of it. Nevertheless, it was not all charm. Judith felt as strongly as ever the incongruity of Freke with his surroundings.

So, some days more passed. Judith found that in finesse she was no match for Freke. Indifferent to him as she might be, he could always place himself where he wanted—he managed to have a great deal more of her society than she would willingly have given him; but she reasoned shrewdly with herself—women being naturally clever in these things: “He will soon give it up. The game is not worth the candle.” And so it proved; for in a little while he began to shadow Jacqueline, and Jacqueline succumbed like a bird to the charmer. If Freke was present, Jacqueline, who was wont to be impatient when not noticed, would sit quite quietly by her sister-in-law’s side, sewing demurely, or walk beside her gravely, not opening her mouth but listening intently, as her changing color showed. One day, when Jacqueline went into the gloomy, darkened drawing-room to play, Freke followed her. Jacqueline sat down, and began some short familiar piece, but she could not render it. She missed notes, became confused, and finally gave up and left the piano in mortification.

“It is because you are here,” she said to Freke, with a child’s resentment.