Throckmorton laughed rather harshly.
“As I’m not going to be married or buried, I can’t see what chance I would have to wear it. But what you say disposes me to put on my full-dress uniform, with sword and chapeau, and wear it to church on Sunday.”
Then Mrs. Sherrard went off after her latest passion, Temple Freke, and left Judith and Throckmorton standing together.
“I think I understand you,” said Judith, with her pretty air of diffidence. “But, as you know, the people here have one principle which stands for honor, and you have another. You have got power and—and—victory out of your principle, and we have got nothing but ruin and defeat and wretchedness out of our principle. How can you hold us to a strict account?”
“I do not—God knows I do not!—but I want a little human kindness. I get it from a few. Dr. Wortley, who was my tutor at my grandfather’s, and has licked me a hundred times—and Morford, and the families at Turkey Thicket and Barn Elms—but none of them, I think,” continued Throckmorton, looking into Judith’s eyes with admiration, “exactly understand how I feel as well as you. What kept me in the army was, as you say, a principle of honor. It was like a knife in me, every Southern officer who resigned. I respected them, because I knew, as only the naval and military men knew, that they were giving up not only their future and their children’s future, for what they thought right, but that they knew the overwhelming odds against them. I don’t believe any one of them really expected success—they knew too much—it was a sacrifice most disinterested. I could not go with them; but I had to face as much obloquy among my people by staying in the army as they had to face in going out. But I swear I never gave one thought to the advantage to me of staying where I was! I stayed because I could not, as a man of honor, do otherwise, I thought my own people would recognize this—that by this time the bitterness would be over.”
“Never mind,” said Judith, with a heavenly smile, “it will come—it will come.”
A little later, Mrs. Sherrard whispered to Throckmorton:
“Are not my two beauties from Barn Elms sweet creatures?”
“Very,” answered Throckmorton, a dark flush showing under his tan and sunburn. “Little Jacqueline is a charming creature.”