Throckmorton: A Novel

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Jacqueline went off, and in half an hour was tucked snugly in the great four-poster. But she would not let Delilah leave her. She kept her pulling the window-curtains this way and that, then raking down the fire because the light from the blazing logs hurt her eyes, and then stirring the flames into a blaze so that she might see the shadows on the wall. At last, however, Delilah got out, Jacqueline calling after her disconsolately:

“O mammy, do you believe in the two buzzards flying—”

“You jes’ shet dat little mouf, an’ go ter sleep, honey,” was Delilah’s sensible reply, as she went out.

The next day the whole party got off, General Temple leaving directions enough behind him to last if he were going to Turkey instead of to Richmond. Jacqueline at the last seemed loath to part from Judith. She said good-by half a dozen times, and wept a little at parting. There would be no need of letters, as they would only be gone four days. Jacqueline was to stop off at the station, and join her father and mother there on their return from Richmond, getting home ten days before the wedding. There was some talk of asking Mrs. Sherrard to come over and stay with Judith during the absence of General and Mrs. Temple, but Judith protested. With her child she would not suffer for company, and the work on Jacqueline’s wedding-dress would keep her busily employed, while Delilah and Simon Peter were protection enough for her at night. Besides this, Throckmorton and Jack would be over every day to look after her. When it was all arranged, Judith felt a sensation of gladness. She would have four days in which she would not be compelled to play her silent and desperate part. She could weep all night without the fear that Mrs. Temple’s clear eyes would notice how pale and worn she was in the morning; she could relax a little the continual tension on her nerves, her feelings, her expression. So, when they were gone, she came back into the lonely house, and, leaving Beverley with his mammy, went up to her own room, and taking out the white silk wedding-gown went to work on it with a pale, unhappy face; she had dared not show an unhappy face before.

The day passed quickly enough, and the short winter afternoon closed in. Judith would no longer take time for her usual afternoon walk; every moment must be devoted to Jacqueline’s gown. About eight o’clock, as she sat in the drawing-room, stitching away, while overhead in her own room Delilah watched the little Beverley as he slept, she heard Throckmorton’s step upon the porch. As she heard it, she gave a slight start, and put her hand on her heart—something she always felt an involuntary inclination to do, and which she had to watch herself to prevent. Throckmorton came in, and greeted her with his usual graceful kindness.

“I thought I would come over and see that nobody stole you and Beverley,” he said.

“There’s no danger for me,” answered Judith; “but for a beautiful boy like my boy—why, he’s always in danger of being stolen.”

Throckmorton scoffed at this.

In five minutes they were seated together, having the first real tête-à-tête of their lives. Judith sat under the mellow gleam of the tall, old-fashioned lamp, the light falling on her chestnut hair and black dress and the billowy expanse of white silk spread over her lap, making high white lights and rich shadows. Throckmorton had often admired her as she sewed. Sewing was a peculiarly gracious and feminine employment, he thought, and Judith’s sewing, when he saw it, was always something artistic like what she was now doing. Throckmorton lay back in one corner of the great sofa, his feet stretched out to the fire. They talked occasionally, but there were long stretches of silence when the only sound was the crackling of the wood-fire and the dropping of the embers. Yet the unity was complete; there is no companionship so real as that which admits of perfect silence. Throckmorton, on the whole, though, talked more than usual. Something in Judith always inspired him to speak of things that he rarely mentioned at all. They talked a little of Jacqueline, but there were innumerable subjects on which they found themselves in sympathy. The evening passed quickly for both. When Throckmorton had gone, and the house was shut up for the night, Judith felt that she had passed the evening in a sort of shadowy happiness; it would have been happiness itself, except that in ten days more it would be wrong even to think of Throckmorton.

Two days more passed. Every evening Throckmorton found himself making his way toward Barn Elms. Each evening passed in the same quiet, simple fashion, but yet there was something different to Throckmorton from any evenings he had ever spent in his life. As for Judith, after the first one, she began to look forward with feverish eagerness to the evening. She lived all day in expectation of that two hours’ talk with Throckmorton. She dressed for him; she hurried little Beverley to bed that she might be ready for him. Her eyes assumed a new brilliancy, and she became handsomer day by day.