Throckmorton Part 23

Next day Dr. Wortley came again, with a great bunch of hyacinths and jonquils, and laid them on Jacqueline's bed. Her large and l.u.s.terless eyes gazed at them with indifference. Usually they danced with delight at the sight of flowers. Delilah put a spray of pink hyacinths in her hand.

"Doan' you 'member, honey, how you useter like dese heah hy'cints, an'

plague yo' mammy when you wuz little ter plant 'em fur you?"

"Yes, I remember," said Jacqueline, calmly.

Judith and Mrs. Temple were present. Dr. Wortley said nothing about Jacqueline's refusing to eat, but talked away, telling all the neighborhood gossip. Then, in a careless way, he felt for Jacqueline's pulse and listened to the beating of her heart. Both were so faint that Dr. Wortley's eyes became grave. After he left the room, he beckoned to Mrs. Temple to follow him. Delilah came, too.

"Ma.r.s.e Doctor, she ain' tech nuttin' but a leetle bit o' toast an' tea since yistiddy, an' it wan' 'nough to keep a bird 'live, let 'lone a human."

Dr. Wortley wheeled round on his old enemy and snapped out:

"If you'll just use some of your persuasive eloquence and stuff her up with jellies and custards as you do your master when he ought to be living on tea and toast, she'll be all right."

Delilah flounced back into Jacqueline's room, her head-handkerchief bobbing about angrily. Mrs. Temple being present, she could not retaliate on Dr. Wortley.

"But, doctor," said Mrs. Temple, trembling strangely, "this is so unlike Jacqueline. I don't know what has been the matter with her lately. She isn't grieving for Throckmorton, but something is on her mind, that is--that is--"

The doctor waited, thinking Mrs. Temple would finish what she was saying. But she did not. This was, indeed, unlike Jacqueline--unlike any instance Dr. Wortley, in his simple experience, had ever known.

"Let her alone for a few days," he said. "We will see."

At the end of a few days Jacqueline had indeed consented to take enough food to keep life in her, but she had lost ground frightfully. Her round, girlish face was sharp and pinched.

Judith tried persuasion, to which Jacqueline responded, "How can I eat anything, when all night long I cry and cry, thinking of the hard-hearted people who--"

Then she stopped suddenly.

"Mise Judy," said Delilah, after a while, "I lay on de pallet by de baid, an' all night long I heah her cryin', jes' cryin' quiet--she doan'

make no noise. I say: 'What de matter, honey? Tell yo' ole mammy dat nuss you?' an' she make 'tense den she 'sleep. But I know she ain'

'sleep--she jest distrusted at de way dem folks treat her at that ungordly party at Tuckey Thicket."

General and Mrs. Temple were anxious about Jacqueline, but by no means despairing. Neither of them thought that anybody could die without having anything ostensibly the matter. Judith, on the contrary, thought this the most alarming thing about Jacqueline. There she lay, steadily losing her hold on life, without any reason in the world that she should not be up and about--except, indeed, that sickness of the soul which saps the very foundations of life. This fear that Jacqueline was slipping away from them impelled her to write Throckmorton a few lines--guarded, but without disguising anything.

Meanwhile, the day that was to have been the wedding-day had come and gone. Jacqueline had not noticed it--she seemed to notice nothing in those days--but toward noon she said to Judith:

"I want to see my wedding-dress--to see if it is quite ruined."

Judith, without protesting, went and got it. She spread it out on the bed. It was rich and white and soft, and was beautiful with Judith's handiwork; but it was bloodstained in many places.

"That blood, I think, came from my heart," said Jacqueline; her eyes were soft and luminous. "I've been thinking about Throckmorton in the last two or three days--for the first time. I have been so busy with my own sorrow and Freke's that I haven't had time to think about anything else. Now, though, I want to see him--if he can get here in time."

"He will soon be here," answered Judith, folding up the dress. "I wrote him four days ago."

"That is so like you! None of the others know what I want, or will let me have my own way, but you."

And that very day Freke appeared.

The hatred that Judith had always felt for him was now intensified into a horror of him--he was the murderer of the poor child lying on her death-bed up-stairs--and she had thought her heart so hard toward him that nothing could soften it; but, strange as it might seem, she did soften toward him when she saw how acute was his misery.

Remorse was new to him. He had rather gloried in going against the antique notions and prejudices of the people in that shut-in, provincial place; but that anything tragic could come of it never really dawned upon him until he saw the terrible consequences before his eyes. He was, indeed, a free man, legally, when he came back; but the moral law, the social prejudice, stood like an everlasting wall between him and Jacqueline. Moreover, there could be no talk of marriage with Jacqueline then--she was the bride of death!

Judith herself told him this. Whether Jacqueline had ever had any deep hold upon him or not, there was no doubt of the sincerity of his grief and his remorse. He said but little, but one look at his changed and agitated face was enough. He asked to see her--a request Judith could not refuse. But the sight of him threw Jacqueline into such a paroxysm of agitation, that Judith almost forced him from the room. There was something a little mysterious about the whole thing, to General and Mrs. Temple, but mercifully they suspected nothing of the real state of affairs. After one more attempt to see Jacqueline, and the extreme agitation into which it threw her, it became plain that it could not be repeated. Jacqueline herself begged that she might not see him.

"Not that I don't love him--don't think that for a moment, Judith!" she cried; "but the sight of him nearly kills me. Then I am sorry that I am going to die--I am so sorry for myself that I feel as if I should cry myself into convulsions."

Judith tried gently to check this sort of talk, but Jacqueline, with a shadowy smile, laughed at her.

"Don't be silly, Judith--_you_ know how it is. All that I hope is, that those hard-hearted people will be sorry when they have killed me with their cruelty."

Freke, still coming every day, walked about the lower floor dismally.

Jacqueline, whose senses became preternaturally sharp, soon recognized his footsteps. Even that unnerved her. Judith told him so kindly, and afterward he would sit motionless before the dining-room fire, always turning his head away from Jacqueline's little chair. Like Judith, he was clear-sighted about her. Of them all, General and Mrs. Temple were the only ones who would not or could not see that Jacqueline would soon be gone. Mrs. Temple had never seen anybody die without being ill, and could not believe that Jacqueline, who suffered no pain, should go. She had been in truth much frightened at the time of Jacqueline's illness; but, now, there was nothing to prevent her getting well except--except--

"That she is determined to die," Dr. Wortley inwardly remarked when Mrs.

Temple talked to him in this way.

Jacqueline began to show a strange eagerness for Throckmorton's arrival.

He was somewhere in the Northwest; but Jack, acting on his own responsibility, telegraphed his father, and put him on the track of Judith's letter.

The news of Jacqueline's illness had got abroad in the county, and something like remorse was felt by many who had seen her at the Turkey Thicket party. By degrees the impression that she was indeed in a bad way became general.

If Judith and Jacqueline had never loved Jack Throckmorton before, they would have loved him then. The sweetness, tenderness, and gentleness of the boy came out every day. There had always been an affinity between Jacqueline and him, and, as other ties weakened, this seemed to grow stronger. He never tired or bored or agitated her. Regularly he came twice a day, with flowers, or game, or with a new book. Dr. Wortley encouraged Jacqueline to see him, as it was plainly through her mind that her body must be cured. So every day Mrs. Temple or Judith would take Jack up to Jacqueline's room, and he would sit down by the bed and tell her his droll stories. Sometimes the ghost of a laugh would come from Jacqueline, and when, at parting, Jack would stand over her, holding her hand and saying, "Miss Jacky, I swear this is not to be stood for another day!--I'm coming over to-morrow to take you to drive!"

Jacqueline would almost laugh aloud. Jack never mentioned Throckmorton to her, though; but one day, when he had brought her a great bunch of violets and narcissus, which had actually brought a little color to Jacqueline's cheeks, and had induced her to eat a piece of bread about as big as a silver dollar, he turned to Judith as he got out of the room: "The major is coming," he said, with an altogether different look in his handsome, boyish face. "I got a dispatch from him to-day. If he makes connections, he can be here by day after to-morrow."

"How glad I am--and how glad Jacqueline will be!" answered Judith.

For the first time, that day Judith had begun to hope that Jacqueline would get well. She had certainly brightened, and this strange interest in Throckmorton's arrival was encouraging. Perhaps, after all, she cared for him more than she thought--and if he came--

Till that day Jacqueline seemed to be brighter and better. The next day the weather turned suddenly cold and bl.u.s.tering, with violent gusts of snow and sleet. Jacqueline, who could see out of the window from her bed, seemed singularly depressed by the weather, although the pleasant, old-fas.h.i.+oned room was a nest of warmth and comfort.

Delilah sat in the great rush-bottomed chair by the sparkling fire, knitting, while Judith, with some work in her lap, sat close by the bed, and occasionally talked hopefully to Jacqueline.

"How sad it is!" presently said Jacqueline; "the peach-trees are all in bloom, and the buds will be killed by this snow--and the little hyacinths that are just coming up--all the young growing things will die to-day."

"Not the plants, dear--only the blossoms," replied Judith, cheerfully.

"In a week they will have forgotten all about this snow."

"It is very sad," sighed Jacqueline.

All day Jacqueline seemed affected by the weather. Barn Elms, never a cheerful place at any time, was apt to be funereal when winter blasts swept the branches of the melancholy poplars and elms against the sides of the house, and when the wind howled amid the loosely built chimneys.

A blackbird had begun building her nest in the tree nearest Jacqueline's window; and often, during the long days when she had lain in her bed, she had watched the bird flying and fluttering back and forth. The wind, which raged fitfully, came on stronger toward the afternoon. It lashed the still bare branches of the trees, beating them frantically about.

The nest soon went. The poor bird, flying wildly around the place where it had been, was suddenly caught by a swaying branch, and, numbed with the cold, was dashed against the window. Jacqueline almost shrieked.

Judith ran down-stairs, and out bareheaded in the sleet and snow, and found the bird--but it was already dead. When she went back, Jacqueline was crying.

"See how it is, Judith--everything that is young and weak will die in this weather."

A book lay on the bed beside Jacqueline--Jack Throckmorton had brought it over to her a day or two before. Jacqueline, laboriously--for she was very weak--turned over the pages and showed a paragraph to Judith:

"And the fire is lighted and the hall warmed, and it rains and it snows and it storms without. Then cometh in a sparrow and flieth about the hall. It cometh in at one door and goeth out at another. While it is within, it is not touched with the winter storm. _But that is only for a moment, only for the least s.p.a.ce._"