Throckmorton Part 14

Freke now meant to have his innings.

"Do you know this is Twelfth-night--the night for telling fortunes?" he said, laying down his violin.--"Come, Jacky, let me take you out of doors and show you the moon and tell yours."

"In this snow!" screamed Mrs. Sherrard; but by that time Freke had thrown a shawl over Jacqueline's head, and had dragged her out of the room, and the hall-door banged loudly after them.

Outside, in the cold, white moonlight and the snow, Freke pointed to the moon.

"Now make your wish," he said; "but don't wish for Millenbeck."

Jacqueline's face could turn no redder than it was, but she looked at Freke, and answered on impulse, as she always did:

"Millenbeck is finer than Barn Elms--"

"Or Wareham," responded Freke, fixing her attention with a stare out of his bold eyes. "See here, Jacqueline, I know how it is. You think you will be able to put up with Throckmorton for the sake of Millenbeck. My dear, he is old--"

"He is only forty-four," answered Jacqueline, defiantly.

"And you are only twenty-one. You would be happier even at Wareham with me, than at Millenbeck with Throckmorton."

"I couldn't be happy in a five-roomed house," quite truthfully said Jacqueline.

"Yes, you could. I could make you forget whether it had five or ten rooms."

At this, he put two fingers under her chin, and, tilting up her rosy face, kissed her on the mouth. "Come!" cried Freke, after a little while, remembering how time was flying, which Jacqueline had evidently forgotten, and making for the steps; but Jacqueline stopped him with a scared face.

"Aren't you married, Freke?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it," answered Freke, stoutly. "Don't you believe all the old women's tales you hear about me, Jacky. I'm no more married than you are this minute. I have been, I admit, but I slipped my head out of the noose some time ago. Do you believe me?"

"Yes," answered Jacqueline, who could believe anything, "if--if--people can really be divorced."

They had not been gone ten minutes, when they returned, yet Freke saw a danger-signal flying in Judith's cheeks. She did not mean to have any more of this. Mrs. Sherrard, who had become an active partisan of Freke's, asked, as soon as they came in:

"What wish did you make, Jacky?"

Jacqueline started. She had made no wish at all.

"Freke ran me out of the house so fast," she began complainingly, "I was perfectly out of breath."

"And of course couldn't make a wish," said Jack Throckmorton, laughing.

"I wished for everything," replied Jacqueline.

Presently they were driving home through the still, frosty night. Judith felt a complete reaction from the ghost of merriment that had possessed her in going that road before. Even Throckmorton noticed the change. She laughed and talked gayly, but her speaking eyes told another story.

Throckmorton could not but smile, and yet felt sorry, too, when Jacqueline, fancying herself unheard, whispered to Judith:

"I won't tell mamma about the waltz."

But Jacqueline was absent-minded too. When they had got home and had gone up-stairs, instead of Jacqueline following Judith to her room, as she usually did when she had anything on her mind, she went straight to her own room, and, locking the door, began to walk up and down, her hands behind her back. How strange, fascinating, overpowering was Freke, after all! Was a divorced man really a married man? Divorces were dreadful things, she had always known--but--suppose, in some other world than that about the Severn neighborhood, it should be considered a venial thing? Jacqueline became so much interested in these puzzling reflections that she unconsciously abandoned the cat-like tread which she had adopted for fear of waking her mother, and stepped out in her own brisk way up and down the big room. Mrs. Temple, hearing this, quietly opened her own chamber-door beneath. That was enough. The walk stopped as if by magic, and in ten minutes Jacqueline was in bed.

CHAPTER IX.

Throckmorton made one short, sharp struggle with himself, and then yielded to Jacqueline's fascination.

Without Freke's keen perceptions, Throckmorton knew enough to doubt whether he ought to congratulate or curse himself if he won Jacqueline; and that he could win her, his own good sense told him soon enough.

Jacqueline's nature was so impressionable that a strong determination could conquer her at any time and at any thing for a season.

Throckmorton, tramping about the country roads with his gun on his shoulder; having jolly bachelor parties at Millenbeck, which were confined strictly to the Severn neighborhood; in church on Sunday, half-listening to Morford's pyrotechnics in the pulpit; smoking at unearthly hours in his own den; riding hard after the hounds--the thought of Jacqueline was never far away, and never without a suspicion of pain and dissatisfaction. He was not given to paltering with himself, and nothing could utterly blind his strong common sense--a common sense that was so imperative to be heard, so difficult to answer, so impossible to evade. It was not in him to surrender his judgment absolutely. He faced bravely the discrepancy in their ages, but he soon admitted to himself that there were other incongruities deeper and more significant than that. Nevertheless, although Reason might argue and preach, Love carried the day. Throckmorton reminded himself that miracles sometimes happened in love. He did not suffer himself to think what Jacqueline would be twenty years from then. Time is always fatal to women of her type. Even her beauty was essentially the beauty of youth.

In twenty years she would be stout and florid. Here Throckmorton, in his reflections, unexpectedly went off on Judith. Hers was a beauty that would last--the beauty of expression, of _esprit_. Then his thoughts, with a sort of shock, reverted to Jacqueline.

As for Freke, Throckmorton did not once connect him with Jacqueline.

Freke was a black sheep, and, as Throckmorton devoutly and thankfully remembered, the daughter of General and Mrs. Temple would not be likely to regard a divorced man as a single man. So, in the course of two or three weeks, Throckmorton had gone through all his phases, and had made up his mind. He could not but laugh at Mrs. Temple's unsuspecting security. She had always regarded Jacqueline as a child, and indeed regarded her very little in any way.

This excellent woman, whose gospel was embodied in her duty to her husband and her children, had always been a singularly unjust mother; but she thought herself the most devoted mother in the world, because she regularly superintended Jacqueline's changes of flannels, and made her take off her shoes when she got her feet wet. Both Mrs. Temple and the general were absolutely incapable of entertaining the idea that Freke was growing fond of Jacqueline; and Freke was not only astute enough to keep them in the dark, but to keep Judith, too, who fondly imagined that she herself had reduced Freke to good behavior as regarded Jacqueline. Freke's estimate of the two young women had not changed in the least--only Jacqueline was come-at-able and Judith was not--and he loved to cross Judith and vex her, and give her pin-sticks as well as stabs in return for the frank hatred she felt for him. She had elected her own position with him--so let her keep it.

It never took Throckmorton long to act on his determinations. Jacqueline saw what was coming. He had a way of looking at her that forced her to look up and then to look down again. He said little things to her, instinct with meaning, that brought the blood to her face. He performed small services for her that were merely conventional, but which were from him to her acts of adoration. And Judith saw it all.

He did not have to wait long for an opportunity. One evening he went to Barn Elms. The general was threatened with a return of his gout, which had got better, and Mrs. Temple had imprisoned him in the "charmber,"

where she mounted guard over him. Only Jacqueline and Judith, with little Beverley, who had been allowed to stay up until eight o'clock, as a great privilege, were in the drawing-room when he walked in. The boy and Throckmorton were such chums that there was no hope of getting Beverley off under a half-hour. He stood between Throckmorton's knees, perfectly happy to be with him, asking endless questions in a subdued whisper, and frowning out of his expressive eyes when Throckmorton wanted to know when his mother intended to cut off his long, yellow curls, so that he would be a real boy. Judith, sitting in her usual place, smiling and calm, soon settled that the winged word would be spoken that night. What better chance would Throckmorton have than when she should be gone to put the child to bed? She watched the tall clock on the high mantel with a fearful sinking of the heart, that drove the color out of her face. Presently it was half-past eight.

"Come, dearest," she said to the child.

Beverley held back.

"I don't want to go with you," he said. "I want to stay and play."

This childish treason to her at that moment was a stab. She got up with a smile, and opened her arms wide, her eyes shining under her straight brows.

"Come, dear little boy," she said.

The tone was so winning, so compelling, it went to the child's baby heart. He ran to his mother, with wide-open arms, who caught him and held him tight, covering his yellow mop of hair with kisses.

Throckmorton looked on surprised and admiring. He had never seen Judith yield to anything emotional like that; she was laughing, blushing, and almost crying, as Beverley swung round her neck. And Throckmorton thought he had never seen her look so handsome as when she ran out of the room, carrying the child, who was a st.u.r.dy fellow, in her slender arms, her face deeply flushed. Throckmorton, as he held the door open for her to pa.s.s out, gave her a meaning smile; but Judith would not look at him. Up-stairs, Beverley was soon in his little bed. Judith, sitting on the floor, with both arms crossed on the crib, held one of the child's little warm hands in hers; the only real and comforting thing in life then seemed that childish hand.

"I will stay an hour," she said. "Mother will be vexed"--Mrs. Temple had old-fashioned ideas about leaving girls to themselves--"but he shall be happy. I will see that he has his chance." But, like Throckmorton himself, she feared for his happiness. n.o.body knew better than she Jacqueline's weakness. She had, indeed, a sort of childish cleverness, which was, however, of no practical good to her; but then, as Judith remembered, Throckmorton's love could transform any woman. "Yes, I shall go through it," she thought, still kneeling on the carpet, and pressing her face to the child's in the crib; "Jacqueline will insist that I shall take off the mourning I wear for the man I never loved, at the wedding of the man I do love. If Throckmorton has any doubts or troubles with Jacqueline, he will certainly come to me. I will help him loyally, and he will need a friend. So far, though, from making me suffer more, the hope of befriending him is the only hope I have left in the world. I wonder how it feels to have one's heart aching and throbbing for another woman's husband--to be counting time by the times one sees him? For a.s.suredly a few words spoken by a priest can not change this." She struck her heart. "And in everything Jacqueline will be blest above me.

See how poor and straitened we are, and Jacqueline's life will be free from any care at all! However, to be loved by Throckmorton must mean to be rich and free and happy." And then, with a sort of clear-eyed despair, she began to look into the future, and see all of Jacqueline's and Throckmorton's life spread out before her. "And how unworthy she is!" she almost cried out aloud. She had now risen from the crib and was gazing out of the window at Millenbeck, that was plainly visible across the white stretch of snow between the two places. "Of course, she will love him--no woman could help that--but she can't understand him.

She will not have the slightest respect for his habits, and will always be wanting him to alter them for her. She never will understand the reserves of Throckmorton's nature. She will tease him with questions. I would not care if Jacqueline were the one to be unhappy"--for so had pain changed her toward the child that had been to her almost as her own--"but in a few years the spell will have vanished. Throckmorton will find out that she is no companion for him. There can be no real companionship for any man like Throckmorton except with a woman somewhere near his own level--least of all now, when he is no longer young."

Then she came back and took the child out of his little bed, and held him in her arms and wept pa.s.sionately over him. "At least I have you, darling; I have you!" she cried.

Down-stairs, in the drawing-room, Throckmorton made good use of his time. With very little apprenticeship, he knew how to make love so that any woman would listen to him.

He told Jacqueline that he loved her, in his own straightforward way; and Jacqueline, whose heart beat furiously, who was frightened and half rebellious, suffered him to get a few shy words from her. Throckmorton did not stoop to deny his age, but he condescended to apologize for it.

In a dim and nebulous way Jacqueline understood the value of the man who thus offered his manly and unstained heart, but she felt acutely the want of common ground between them.

Throckmorton's love-making was not at all what simple Jacqueline fancied love-making to be. He did not protest--he did not talk poetry, nor abase himself; he made no exaggerated promises, nor did he sue for her love.

At the first sign of yielding, he caught her to his heart and devoured her with kisses. Yet, when Jacqueline wanted to escape from him, he let her go. He would not keep her a moment unwillingly. Jacqueline did not understand this masterful way of doing things. She fancied that a lover meant a slave, and apparently Throckmorton considered a lover meant a master.