Throckmorton: A Novel

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  THROCKMORTON

  A NOVEL

  BY

  MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

  GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers :: :: New York

  COPYRIGHT, 1890 BY D. APPLETON & CO.

  COPYRIGHT, 1909 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  THROCKMORTON.

  CHAPTER I.

  In a lowland Virginia neighborhood, strangely cut off from the rest ofthe world geographically, and wrapped in a profound and charmingstillness, a little universe exists. It has its oracles of law,medicine, and divinity; its wars and alliances. Free from that outwardcontact which makes an intolerable sameness among people, its typesdevelop quaintly. There is peace, and elbow-room for everybody'speculiarities.

  Such was the Severn neighborhood--called so from Severn church. Everybrick in this old pile had been brought from green England two hundredyears before. It seemed as if, in those early days, nothing made withhands should be without picturesqueness; and so this ancient church,paid for in hogsheads of black tobacco, which was also the currency inwhich the hard-riding, hard-drinking parsons took their dues, was peakedand gabled most beautifully. The bricks, mellowed by two centuries, hadbecome a rich, dull red, upon which, year after year, in the enchantedSouthern summers and the fitful Southern winters, mosses and graylichens laid their clinging fingers. It was set far back from the broad,white road, and gnarled live-oaks and silver beeches and the melancholyweeping-willows grew about the churchyard. Their roots had pushed, withgentle persistence, through the crumbling brick wall that surrounded it,where most of the tombstones rested peacefully upon the ground as theychanced to fall. Within the church itself, modern low-backed pews hadsupplanted the ancient square boxes during an outbreak of philistinismin the fifties. At the same time, a wooden flooring had been laid overthe flat stones in the aisles, under which dead and gone vicars--for theparish had a vicar in colonial days--slept quietly. The interior wasdarkened by the branches of the trees that pressed against the wall andpeered curiously through the small, clear panes of the oblong windows;and over all the singular, unbroken peace and silence of the regionbrooded.

  The country round about was fruitful and tame, the slightly rollinglandscape becoming as flat as Holland toward the rich river-bottoms. Therivers were really estuaries, making in from the salt ocean bays, and asbriny as the sea itself. Next the church was the parsonage land, stillknown as the Glebe, although glebes and tithes had been dead thesehundred years. The Glebe house, which was originally plain andold-fashioned, had been smartened up by the rector, the Rev. EdmundMorford, until it looked like an old country-woman masquerading in aballet costume; but the Rev. Edmund thought it beautiful, and onlywatched his chance to lay sacrilegious hands on the old church and toplaster it all over with ecclesiastical knickknacks of various sorts.

  The Rev. Mr. Morford had come into the world handicapped by the mostremarkable personal beauty, and extreme fluency of tongue. Otherwise, hewas an honest and conscientious man. But he belonged to that commonclass among ecclesiastics who know all about the unknowable, and haveaccurately measured the unfathomable. On Sundays, when he got up inthe venerable pulpit at Severn, looking so amazingly handsome in hissnow-white surplice, he dived into the everlasting mysteries with acocksureness that was appalling or delightful according to the view onetook of it. In the tabernacle of his soul, which was quite empty ofguile and malice, three devils had taken up their abode: one was theconviction of his own beauty, another was the conviction of his owncleverness, and still another was the suspicion that every woman wholooked at him wanted to marry him. Mr. Morford reasoned thus:

  I. That all women want to get married. II. That an Edmund Morford is not to be picked up every day. III. That eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

  On Sundays he scarcely dared look toward the pew where General and Mrs.Temple sat, with their beautiful widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs. BeverleyTemple, on one side of them, and Jacqueline Temple, as lovely in hersmall, kittenish way, on the other, for fear that one or the other ofthese young women would fall hopelessly in love with him. Mrs. Beverley,as the young widow was called, to distinguish her from the elder Mrs.Temple, had the fatal charm for the Rev. Edmund that all things fearedand admired have. He believed in his heart of hearts that widows weremade for his undoing, and that the good old Hindoo custom of burningthem up alive was the only really safe disposition to make of them. Thecharm of Judith Temple's piquant face and soft, shy eyes was somewhatneutralized by a grim suspicion lodged in Mr. Morford's mind that shewas unnecessarily clever. The Rev. Edmund had a wholesome awe of cleverwomen, especially if they had a knack of humor, and was very much afraidof them. Judith had a sedate way of replying to Morford's resoundingplatitudes that sometimes created a laugh, and when he laboriouslyunwound the meaning, he was apt to find the germ of a joke; and Judithwas so grave--her eyes were so sweetly serious when she was laying trapsto catch the Rev. Edmund's sluggish wits. But Judith herself thought ofno man whatever, and had learned to regard the sparkle of herunquenchable humor almost as a sin. However, having got a bad name forcleverness, neither the most sincere modesty nor the deepest courtesyavailed her in keeping it quiet. Morford, in his simple soul, thought aclever woman could do anything; and suppose Judith should cast her eyeson--at this the Rev. Edmund would turn pale in the midst of his sermonwhen he caught Judith's gray eyes fixed soberly on him. Soberness--andparticularly Judith's soberness--was deceitful.

  Barn Elms, the Temple place, was near to the Glebe and to Severn church.The house was rambling and shabby, and had been patched and pieced, withan utter disregard of architectural proportion that resulted in acurious and unexpected picturesqueness. A room was put on here, and aporch was clapped up there, just as the fancy of each successive Templehad dictated. It was partly of brick and partly of stone. Around itstood in tall ranks the solemn, black-leaved poplars, and greatlocust-trees grew so close to the house that on windy nights the soundof their giant arms beating the shingled roof awoke superstitious fearsin the negroes, who declared it to be the "sperrits" of dead and goneTemples struggling to get in through the chimneys. There was a step upor a step down in every room in the house, and draughts enough in theunnecessary halls and passages to turn a windmill. There was, ofcourse, that queer mixture of shabbiness and luxury about the old placeand the mode of living that is characteristic of Virginia. Mrs. Templehad piles and piles of linen sheets laid away with the leaves of damaskroses between them in the old cedar chests, but half the rooms and allthe stairs and passages were uncarpeted. It required the services of anable-bodied negro to keep these floors polished--but polished they were,like a looking-glass. The instrument used in this process was called a"dry-rubbin' bresh" by the manipulators, and might well have been usedin Palestine during the days of Herod the tetrarch, being merely a blockof wood covered with a sheepskin, well matted with wax and turpentine.At unearthly hours, in cold winter mornings and gray summer dawns, themonotonous echo of this "bresh" going up and down the hall-floors wasthe earliest sound in the Barn Elms house. There was a full service ofsilver plate displayed upon a huge and rickety mahogany sideboard, butthere was a lack of teaspoons. Mrs. Temple had every day a dinner fitfor a king, but General Temple was invariably behindhand with his taxes.The general's first purchase after the war was a pair of splendidKentucky horses to pull the old carriage bought when Mrs. Temple was abride, and which was so moth-eaten and worm-eaten and rust-eaten thatwhen it started out it was a wonder that it ever came back again. Thekitchen was a hundred yards from the house in one direction, and thewell, with its old-fashioned bucket and sweep, was a hundred yards offin another direction. The ice-house and stables were comple
tely out ofsight; while the negro houses, annually whitewashed a glaring white,were rather too near. But none of these things annoyed General and Mrs.Temple, who would have stared in gentle surprise at the hint thatanything at Barn Elms could be improved.

  General Temple, six feet tall, as straight as an Indian, with a rich,commanding voice and a lofty stride, stood for the shadow of domesticauthority; while Mrs. Temple, a gentle, affectionate, soft-spoken,devoted, and obstinate woman, who barely reached to the general's elbow,was the actual substance. From the day of their marriage he had neverquestioned her decision upon any subject whatever, although an elaboratefiction of marital authority was maintained between them and devoutlybelieved in by both. Mrs. Temple always consulted the generalpunctiliously--when she had made up her mind--and General Temple, aftera ponderous pretense of thinking it over, would say in his fine,sonorous voice: "My dear Jane, the conviction of your extremely soundjudgment, formed from my experience of you during thirty years ofmarried life, inclines me to the opinion that your suggestion isadmirable. You have my permission, my love"--a permission Mrs. Templenever failed to accept with wifely gratitude, and, like the general,really thought it amounted to something. This status is extremely commonin Virginia, where, as a rule, the men have a magnificent but imaginaryempire, and the women conduct the serious business of life.

  Brave, chivalrous, generous, loving God and revering woman, GeneralTemple was as near a monster of perfection as could be imagined, exceptwhen he had the gout. Then he became transformed into a full-blowndemon. From the most optimistic form of Episcopal faith, he lapsed intothe darkest Calvinism as soon as he felt the first twinge of his malady,and by the time he was a prisoner in the "charmber," as the bedroom ofthe mistress of the family is called in Virginia, he believed that thewhole world was created to be damned. Never had General Temple beenknown under the most violent provocation to use profane language; butunder the baleful influence of gout and superheated religion combined,he always swore like a pirate. His womenkind, who quietly bullied himduring the best part of the year, found him a person to be feared whenhe began to have doubts about freewill and election. To this anexception must be made in favor of Mrs. Temple and of Delilah, thehousehold factotum, who was no more afraid of General Temple than Mrs.Temple was. She it was who was mainly responsible for these carnivalsof gout by feeding the patient on fried oysters and plum-pudding whenDr. Wortley prescribed gruel and tapioca. Delilah was one of theunterrified, and used these spells to preach boldly at General Templethe doctrines of the "Foot-washin' Baptisses," a large and influentialcolored sect to which she belonged.

  "Ole marse," Delilah would begin, argumentatively, "if you wuz ter jinede Foot-washers--"

  "Jane! Jane!" General Temple would shout.--"Come here, my love. If youdon't get rid of this infernal old fool, who wants absolutely to dragoonme out of my religion, I'll be damned if I--God forgive me forswearing--and you, my dear--"

  Sometimes these theological discussions had been known to end byDelilah's flying out of the room, with the general's boot-jack whizzingafter her. At Mrs. Temple's appearance, though, the emeute would beinstantly quelled. Delilah was also actively at war with Dr. Wortley, asthe black mammies and the doctors invariably were, and during the visitsof the doctor, who was a peppery little man, it was no infrequent thingto hear his shrill falsetto, the general's loud basso, and Delilah'semphatic treble all combined in an angry three-cornered discussioncarried on at the top of their lungs.

  Like mistress, like maid. As Mrs. Temple ruled the general, Delilahruled Simon Peter, her husband, who since the war was butler, coachman,gardener, and man-of-all-work at Barn Elms. Mrs. Temple, however, ruledwith circumlocution as well as circumspection, and had not wordssufficient to condemn women who attempt to govern their husbands. ButDelilah had no such scruples, and frequently treated Simon Peter toremarks like these:

  "Menfolks is mighty consequenchical. Dey strut 'bout, an' dey cusses an'damns, an' de womenfolks do all de thinkin' an' de wukkin'. How long youthink ole marse keep dis heah plantation if it warn't fur mistis?"

  "Look a heah, 'oman," Simon Peter would retaliate, when intolerablygoaded, "Paul de 'postle say--"

  "What anybody keer fur Paul de 'postle? Womenfolks ain' got no use furdat ole bachelor. Men is cornvenient fur ter tote water, an' I ain' seennuttin' else much dey is good fur."

  Simon Peter's entire absence of style partly accounted for the lowopinion of his abilities entertained by his better half. He was slouchyand sheep-faced, and, when he appeared upon great occasions in one ofGeneral Temple's cast-off coats, the tails dragged the ground, whilethe sleeves had to be turned back nearly to the elbow. Delilah, on thecontrary, was as tall as a grenadier, and had an air of command secondonly to General Temple himself and much more genuine. She was addictedto loud, linsey-woolsey plaids, and on her head was an immaculatelywhite "handkercher" knotted into a turban that would have done creditto the Osmanlis.

  The war had given General Temple the opportunity of his lifetime. He"tendered his sword to his State," as he expressed it, immediatelyorganized Temple's Brigade, and thereafter won a reputation as thebravest and most incompetent commander of his day. His ideas of abrigade commander were admirably suited to the middle ages. He wouldhave been great with Richard Coeur de Lion at the siege of Ascalon,but of modern warfare the general was as innocent as a babe. It wascommonly reported that, the first time he led his brigade into action,he did not find it again for three days. His men called him Pop, andalways cheered him vociferously, but pointedly declined to follow himwherever he should lead, which was invariably where he oughtn't to havebeen. He had innumerable horses shot under him, but, by a succession ofmiracles, escaped wounds or capture. It was a serious mortification tothe general that he should have come out of the war with both arms andboth legs; and it was marvelous, considering that he put himself indirect line of fire upon every possible occasion, and galloped furiouslyabout, waving his sword whenever he was in a particularly ticklishplace.

  Since the war General Temple had found congenial employment in studyingthe art of war as exemplified in books, and in writing a History ofTemple's Brigade. As he knew less about it than any man in it, hisundertaking was a considerable one, especially as he had to give apersonal sketch, with pedigree and anecdotes, of every member of thebrigade. He had started out to complete this great work in threevolumes, but it looked as if ten would be nearer the mark. As regardsthe theory of war, General Temple soon became an expert, and knew byheart every campaign of importance from those of Hannibal, the one-eyedson of Hamilcar, down to Appomattox. A good deal of the money that wouldhave paid his taxes went into the general's military library, whichwas a source of endless pride to him, and which caused the History ofTemple's Brigade to be, in some sort, a history of all wars, ancientand modern.

  The pride and satisfaction this literary work of his gave the general'shonest heart can not be described. He read passages of it aloud to Mrs.Temple and Judith and Jacqueline in the solemn evenings in the oldcountry-house, his resonant voice echoing through the old-fashioned,low-pitched drawing-room. Mrs. Temple listened sedately and admiringly,and thanked Heaven for having given her this prodigy of valor andlearning. Nor, after hearing the History of Temple's Brigade all theevening, was she wearied when, at two o'clock in the morning, GeneralTemple would have a wakeful period, and striding up and down thebedroom floor, wrapped in a big blanket over his dressing-gown,declaimed and dissected all the campaigns of the war, from Big Bethel toAppomattox. Mrs. Temple, sitting up in bed, with the most placid air inthe world, would listen, and thank and admire and love more than everthis hero, whom she had wrapped around her finger for the last thirtyyears. O blessed ignorance--O happy blindness of women! which graciousboon God has not withheld from any of the sex. But there was somethingelse that made General Temple's long-winded war stories so deeply,tragically interesting to Mrs. Temple. There had been a son--the husbandof the handsome daughter-in-law--Mrs. Temple could not yet speak hisname without a sob in her voice.
That was what she had given to thegreat fight. When the news of his death came, General Temple, who hadnever before dreamed of helping Mrs. Temple's stronger nature, hadridden night and day to be with her at that supreme moment, knowing thatthe blow would crush her if it did not kill her. She came out of thefurnace alive but unforgetting. She would not herself forget Beverley,nor would she allow anybody else to forget him. She remembered hisanniversaries, she cherished his belongings; she, this tender,excellent, self-sacrificing woman, sacrificed, as far as she could,herself and everybody else to the memory of the dead and gone Beverley.As fast as one crape band on the general's hat wore out, she herself,with trembling hands, sewed another one on. As for herself, she wouldhave thought it sacrilege to have worn anything but the deepest black;and Judith, after four years of widowhood, wore, whether willingly orunwillingly, the severest widow's garb. Jacqueline alone had beensuffered, out of consideration for her youth and the general's pleading,to put on colors. The girl, who was beautiful and simple, but quitedifferent from other girls, in her heart cherished a hatred against thismemory of the dead, that had made her youth so sad, so encompassed withdeath. Jacqueline loved life and feared death; and whenever her motherbegan to speak of Beverley, which she did a dozen times a day,Jacqueline's shoulders would twitch impatiently. She longed to say:"What is he to us? He is dead--and we live. Why can't he be allowed torest in peace, like other dead people?" Jacqueline was far fromheartless; she loved her sister-in-law twice as well as she had everloved her handsome silent brother, whose death made no gap in her life,but had ruthlessly barred out all brightness from it. Jacqueline, inher soul, longed for luxury and comfort. All the discrepancies anddeficiencies at Barn Elms were actually painful to her, although she hadbeen used to them all her life. She wanted a new piano instead of thewheezy old machine in the drawing-room. She wanted a thousand things,and, to make her dissatisfaction with Barn Elms more complete, not aquarter of a mile away, across a short stretch of feathery pine-trees,on a knoll, stood a really great house, Millenbeck by name. ToJacqueline's inexperienced eyes, the large square brick house, with itsstone balustrade around the roof, its broad porch, with marble stepsthat shone whitely through the trees around it, was quite palatial. Andnobody at all lived there. It was the family place of the Throckmortons.The last Throckmorton in the county was dead and gone; but there wasanother--grandson to the last--a certain Major George Throckmorton, who,although Virginian born and bred, had remained in the regular army allthrough the war, and was still in it. This George Throckmorton had spenthis boyhood at Millenbeck with his grandfather, who was evil temperedand morose, and thoroughly wicked in every way. The old man had gone tohis account during the war, and since then his creditors had beenfighting over his assets, which consisted of Millenbeck alone. MajorThrockmorton had money, and it had been whispered about that, wheneverMillenbeck was sold, this army Throckmorton would buy it. But it wasfreely predicted that he would never dare show his face in his nativecounty after his turpitude during the war in fighting against his State,and he was commonly alluded to as a traitor. Nevertheless, at Severnchurch, one Sunday, it was said that this Throckmorton had boughtMillenbeck, and would shortly make his appearance there.

  General and Mrs. Temple, as they sat on opposite sides of the fireplaceat Barn Elms, discussing the matter with the profound gravity that theadvent of a new neighbor in the country requires, to say nothing of thesensation of having a traitor at one's doors, came nearer disagreeingthan usual. The night was cool, although it was early in September, anda little fire sparkled cheerfully upon the brass andirons on the hearthin the low-pitched, comfortable, shabby drawing-room. Mrs. Temple,clicking her knitting-needles placidly, with her soft eyes fixed on thefire, went over the enormity of those to whom Beverley's death was due.To her, the gentlest and at the same time the sternest of women, the wartook on a personal aspect that would have been ludicrous had it not beenpathetic. Ah! what was that boy that Beverley had left, what was Judiththe young widow, or even Jacqueline, to that lost son? Nothing, nothing!Mrs. Temple, still gazing at the fire, saw in her mind, as she saw everyhour of the day and many of the night, the dead man lying stark andcold; and, as if in answer to her thoughts, General Temple spoke, layingdown his volume of Jomini:

  "My love, what will you do--ahem! what would you recommend me to doregarding George Throckmorton when he arrives? Speak frankly, my dear,and do not be timid about giving me your opinion."

  A curious kind of resentment shone in Mrs. Temple's face.

  "It is not for a woman to guide her husband; but _we_ at least can notforget what the war has cost us."

  General Temple sighed. He had heard that Throckmorton had got a year'sleave and would probably spend it at Millenbeck. How fascinating did theprospect appear of a real military man with whom he could discuss plansof campaign, and flank movements, and reconnaissances, and all the_technique_ of war in which his soul delighted! For, although Dr.Wortley had become a great military critic, as everybody was in thosedays, he had never smelt powder, and was a very inferior antagonist fora brigadier-general, who had been in sixteen pitched battles withoutunderstanding the first thing about any of them.

  Jacqueline, who sat in her own little chair, with her feet on afootstool, and her elbows on her knees, began in an injured voice:

  "And the house is going to be perfectly grand. Mrs. Sherrard told meabout it to-day. A whole parcel of people"--Jacqueline was a provincial,although an amazingly pretty one--"a whole parcel of people came by theboat--workmen and servants, and most splendid furniture, carpets, andpictures, and cabinets, and all sorts of elegant things--just for thosetwo men--for there is a young man, too--Jack is his name."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Temple, meditatively, as she still clicked herknitting-needles together with a pleasant musical sound, "the boy mustbe about twenty-two. George Throckmorton I well remember was married attwenty-one to a pretty slip of a girl, so I've heard, who lived a verylittle while. He can't be more than forty-four now. He is the last man Iever supposed would ever turn traitor. He was the finest lad--I rememberhim so well when he was a handsome black-eyed boy; and when we werefirst married--don't you recollect, my dear?"

  General Temple rose gallantly, and, taking Mrs. Temple's hand in his,kissed it.

  "Can you ask me, my love, if I remember anything connected with thatmost interesting period of my life?" he asked.

  Neither the handsome Judith nor little Jacqueline were at alldiscomposed by this elderly love-making, to which they were perfectlyaccustomed. A slight blush came into Mrs. Temple's refined, middle-agedface. It was worth while to coddle a man, and take all the labor ofthinking and acting off his shoulders, for the sake of this delightfulsentiment. Like his courage, General Temple's sentiment was high-flownbut genuine.

  "I was about to say," resumed Mrs. Temple, when the general hadreturned to his chair, "that when I came to Barn Elms a bride, GeorgeThrockmorton was much here. You did not notice him, my love, as Idid--but I felt sorry for the boy; old George Throckmorton certainly wasa most godless person. The boy's life would have been quite wretched, Ithink, in spite of his grandfather's liberality to him, but for the fewpeople in the neighborhood like Kitty Sherrard and myself, who tried tocomfort him. He would come over in the morning and stay all day,following me about the house and garden, trying to amuse Beverley, whowas a mere baby."

  Mrs. Temple never spoke the name of her dead son without a strangelittle pause before it.

  "And, my dear," answered the general, making another feeble effort, "canyou not now embrace the scriptural injunction?"

  "The Scripture says," responded sternly this otherwise gentle andChristian soul, "that there is a time to love and a time to hate."

  All this time, Judith, the young widow, had not said a word. She wasslight and girlish-looking. Her straight dark brows were drawn with asingle line, and in her eyes were gleams of mirth, of intelligence, of alove of life and its pleasures, that habitual restraint could not whollysubdue. When she rose, or when she sat down, or when sh
e walked about,or when she arched her white neck, there was a singular grace, of whichshe was totally unconscious. Something about her suggested both love andmodesty. But Fate, that had used her as if she were a creature without asoul, had married her to Beverley Temple--and within two months she wasa widow. The shock, the horror of it, the willingness to idealize thedead man, had made her quietly assume the part of one who is done withthis world. And Nature struggles vainly with Fate. Judith, in her blackgown, and a widow's cap over her chestnut hair, with her pretty air ofwisdom and experience, fancied she had sounded the whole gamut of humanlove, grief, loss, and joy. Neither Millenbeck, nor anything butBeverley's child and his father and mother and sister, mattered anythingto her, she thought.

  Jacqueline, however, looked rebellious, but said nothing. Like herfather, she was under the rule of this soft-voiced mother. But itwas certainly very hard, thought Jacqueline, bitterly, that withMillenbeck beautifully fitted up, with a delightful young man like JackThrockmorton--for Jacqueline had already endowed him with all the gracesand virtues--and a not old man, a soldier too, should be right at theirdoors, and she never to have a glimpse of Millenbeck, nor a chance forwalks and drives with them. Jacqueline sighed profoundly, and lookeddespairingly at Judith, who was the stay, the prop, the comforter ofthis undisciplined young creature.