CHAPTER IX.
GUY LEGARD
"He meant to have spoken that night; he would have spoken but for May Everard. And yet that is two weeks ago, and we have been together since, and – "
Aileen Jocyln broke off abruptly, and looked out over the far-spreading, gray sea.
The morning was dull, the leaden sky threatening rain, the wind sighing fitfully, and the slow, gray sea creeping up the gray sands. Aileen Jocyln sat as she had sat since breakfast, aimless and dreary, by her dressing-room window, gazing blankly over the pale landscape, her hair falling loose and damp over her shoulders, and a novel lying listlessly in her lap. The book had no interest; her thoughts would stray, in spite of her, to Thetford Towers.
"She is very pretty," Miss Jocyln thought, "with that pink and white wax-doll sort of prettiness some people admire. I never thought he could, with his artistic nature; but I suppose I was mistaken. They call her fascinating; I believe that rather hoidenish manner of hers, and all those dashing airs, and that 'loud' style of dress and doings, take some men by storm. I presume I was mistaken in Sir Rupert, I dare say pretty, penniless May will be Lady Thetford before long."
Miss Jocyln's short upper-lip curled rather scornfully, and she rose up with a little air of petulance and walked across the room to the opposite window. It commanded a view of the lawn and a long wooded drive, and, cantering airily up under the waving trees, she saw the young lady of whom she had been thinking. The pretty, fleet-footed pony and his bright little mistress were by no means rare visitors at Jocyln Hall, and Miss Jocyln was always elaborately civil to Miss Everard. Very pretty little May looked – all her tinseled curls floating in the breeze, like a golden banner; the blue eyes more starily radiant than ever, the dark riding-habit and jaunty hat and plume the most becoming things in the world. She saw Miss Jocyln at the window, kissed her hand and resigned Arab to the groom. A minute more and she was saluting Aileen with effusion.
"You solemn Aileen! to sit and mope here in the house, instead of improving your health and temper by a breezy canter over the downs. Don't contradict; I know you were moping. I should be afraid to tell you how many miles Arab and I have got over this morning. And you never came to see me yesterday, either. Why was it?"
"I didn't feel inclined," Miss Jocyln answered, truthfully.
"No, you never do feel inclined unless I come and drag you out by force; you sit in the house and grow yellow and jaundiced over high-church novels. I declare I never met so many lazy people in all my life as I have done since I came home. One don't mind mamma, poor thing! shutting herself up and the sunshine and fresh air of heaven out; but, for you and Rupert! And, speaking of Rupert," ran on Miss Everard in a breathless sort of way, "he wanted to commence his great picture of 'Fair Rosamond and Eleanor' yesterday – and how could he when Eleanor never came? Why didn't you – you promised?"
"I changed my mind, I suppose."
"And broke your word – more shame for you, then! Come now."
"No; thanks. It's going to rain."
"Nothing of the sort; and Rupert is so anxious. He would have come himself, only my lady is ill to-day with one of her bad headaches, and asked him to read her to sleep; and, like the good boy that he is in the main, though shockingly lazy, he obeyed. Do come, Aileen; there's a dear! Don't be selfish."
Miss Jocyln rose rather abruptly.
"I have no desire to be selfish, Miss Everard. If you will wait ten minutes whilst I dress, I will accompany you to Thetford Towers."
She rang the bell and swept from the room, stately and uplifted. May looked after her, fidgeting a little.
"Dear me! I suppose she's offended now at that word 'selfish.' I never did get on very well with Aileen Jocyln, and I'm afraid I never shall. I shouldn't wonder if she were jealous."
Miss Everard laughed a little silvery laugh all to herself, and slapped her kid riding-boot with her pretty toy whip.
"I hope I didn't interrupt a tender declaration that night in the conservatory, but it looked like it. If I did, I am sure Rupert has had fifty chances since, and I know he hasn't availed himself of them, or Aileen would never wear that dissatisfied face. I know she's in love with him, though, to be sure, she would see me impaled with the greatest pleasure if she only thought I suspected it; but I'm not so certain about him. He's a great deal too indolent in the first place, to get up a grand passion for anybody, and I think he's inclined to look graciously on me – poor little me – in the second. You may spare yourself the trouble, my dear Sir Rupert; for a gentleman whose chief aim in existence is to smoke Turkish pipes and lie on the grass and write and read poetry is not at all the sort of man I mean to bless for life."
The two girls descended to the court-yard, mounted and rode off. Both rode well, and both looked their best on horseback, and made a wonderfully pretty picture as they galloped through St. Gosport in dashing style, bringing the admiring population in a rush to doors and windows. Perhaps Sir Rupert Thetford thought so, too, as he stood at the great front entrance to receive them, with a kindling light in his artist's eyes.
"May said she would fetch you, and May always keeps her word," he said, as he walked slowly up the sweeping staircase; "besides, Aileen, I am to have the first sitting for the 'Rosamond and Eleanor' to-day, am I not? May calls me an idle dreamer, a useless drone in the busy human hive; so, to vindicate my character and cleave a niche in the temple of fame, I am going to immortalize myself over this painting."
"You'll never finish it," said May; "it will be like all the rest. You'll begin on a gigantic scale and with super-human efforts, and you'll cool down and get sick of it before it is half finished, and it will go to swell the pile of daubed canvas in your studio now. Don't tell me! I know you."
"And have the poorest possible opinion of me, Miss Everard?"
"Yes, I have! I have no patience when I think what you might do, what you might become, and see what you are! If you were not Sir Rupert Thetford, with a princely income, you might be a great man. As it is – "
"As it is!" cried the young baronet, trying to laugh and reddening violently, "I will still be a great man – a modern Murillo. Are you not a little severe, Miss Everard? Aileen, I believe this is your first visit to my studio?"
"Yes," said Miss Jocyln, coldly and briefly. She did not like the conversation, and May Everard's familiar home-truths stung her. To her he was everything mortal man should be; she was proud, but she was not ambitious; what right had this penniless little free-speaker to come between them and talk like this?
May was flitting about like the fairy she was, her head a little on one side, like a critical canary, her flowing skirt held up, inspecting the pictures.
"'Jeanne D'Arc before her Judges,' half finished, as usual, and never to be completed; and weak – very, if it ever was completed. 'Battle of Bosworth Field,' in flaming colors, all confusion and smoke and red ochre and rubbish; you did well not to trouble yourself any more with that. 'Swiss Peasant' – ah! that is pretty. 'Storm at Sea,' just tolerable. 'Trial of Marie Antoinette.' My dear Rupert, why will you persist in these figure paintings when you know your forte is landscape? 'An Evening in the Eternal City.' Now, that is what I call an exquisite little thing! Look at the moon, Aileen, rising over those hill-tops; and see those trees – you can almost feel the wind that blows! And that prostrate figure – why, that looks like yourself, Rupert!"
"It is myself."
"And the other, stooping – who is he?"
"The painter of that picture, Miss Everard; yes, the only thing in my poor studio you see fit to eulogize is not mine. It was done by an artist friend – an unknown Englishman, who saved my life in Rome three years ago. Come in, mother mine, and defend your son from the two-edged sword of May Everard's tongue."
For Lady Thetford, pale and languid, appeared on the threshold, wrapped in a shawl.
"It's all for his good, mamma. Come here and look at this 'Evening in the Eternal City.' Rupert has nothing like it in all his collection, though these are the beginning of many better things. He saved your life? How was it?"
"Oh! a little affair with brigands; nothing very thrilling, but I should have been killed or captured all the same, if this Legard had not come to the rescue. May is right about the picture; he painted well, had come to Rome to perfect himself in his art. Very fine fellow, Legard."
"Legard!"
It was Lady Thetford who had spoken sharply and suddenly. She had put up her glass to look at the Italian picture, but dropped it, and faced abruptly round.
"Yes, Legard. Guy Legard, a young Englishman, about my own age. By-the-bye, if you saw him, you would be surprised by his singular resemblance to some of those dead and gone Thetfords hanging over there in the picture-gallery – fair hair, blue eyes, and the same peculiar cast of features to a shade. I was rather taken aback, I confess, when I saw it first. My dear mother – "
It was not a cry Lady Thetford had uttered – it was a kind of wordless sob. He soon caught her in his arms and held her there, her face the color of death.
"Get a glass of water, May – she is subject to these attacks. Quick!"
Lady Thetford drank the water, and sunk back in the chair Aileen wheeled up, her face looking awfully corpse-like in contrast to her dark garments and dead black hair.
"You should not have left your room," said Sir Rupert, "after your attack this morning. Perhaps you had better return and lie down. You look perfectly ghastly."
"No," his mother sat up as she spoke and pushed away the glass, "there is no necessity for lying down. Don't wear that scared face, May – it was nothing, I assure you. Go on with what you were saying, Rupert."
"What I was saying? What was it?"
"About this young artist's resemblance to the Thetfords."
"Oh! well, there's no more to say; that is all. He saved my life and he painted that picture, and we were Damon and Pythias over again during my stay in Rome. I always do fraternize with those sort of fellows, you know; and I left him in Rome, and he promised, if he ever returned to England – which he wasn't so sure of – he would run down to Devonshire to see me and my painted ancestors, whom he resembles so strongly. That is all; and now, young ladies, if you will take your places we will commence on the Rosamond and Eleanor. Mother, sit here by this window if you want to play propriety, and don't talk."
But Lady Thetford chose to go to her own room, and her son gave her his arm thither and left her lying back amongst her cushions in front of the fire. It was always chilly in those great and somewhat gloomy rooms, and her ladyship was always cold of late. She lay there looking with gloomy eyes into the ruddy blaze, and holding her hands over her painfully beating heart.
"It is destiny, I suppose," she thought, bitterly; "let me banish him to the farthest end of the earth; let me keep him in poverty and obscurity all his life, and when the day comes that it is written, Guy Legard will be here. Sooner or later the vow I have broken to Sir Noel Thetford must be kept; sooner or later Sir Noel's heir will have his own."
CHAPTER X.
ASKING IN MARRIAGE
A fire burned in Lady Thetford's room, and among piles of silken pillows my lady, languid and pale, lay, looking into the leaping flame. It was a hot July morning, the sun blazed like a wheel of fire in a sky without a cloud, but Lady Thetford was always chilly of late. She drew the crimson shawl she wore closer around her, and glanced impatiently now and then at the pretty toy clock on the decorated chimney-piece. The house was very still; its one disturbing element, Miss Everard, was absent with Sir Rupert for a morning canter over the sunny Devon hills.
"How long they stay, and these solitary rides are so dangerous! Oh! what will become of me if it is too late, after all! What shall I do if he says no?"
There was a quick man's step without – a moment and the door opened, and Sir Rupert, "booted and spurred" from his ride, was bending over his mother.
"Louise says you sent for me after I left. What is it, mother – you are not worse?"
He knelt beside her. Lady Thetford put back the fair brown hair with tender touch, and gazed in the handsome face so like her own, with eyes full of unspeakable love.
"My boy! my boy!" she murmured, "my darling Rupert! Oh! it is hard, it is bitter to have to leave you!"
"Mother!" with a quick look of alarm, "what is it? Are you worse?"
"No worse, Rupert; but no better. My boy, I shall never be better again in this world."
"Mother – "
"Hush, my Rupert – wait; you know it is true; and but for leaving you I should be glad to go. My life has not been so happy since your father died, that I should greatly cling to it."
"But, mother, this won't do; these morbid fancies are worst of all. Keeping up one's spirits is half the battle."
"I am not morbid; I merely state a fact – a fact which must preface what is to come. Rupert, I know I am dying, and before we part I want to see my successor at Thetford Towers."
"My dear mother!" amazedly.
"Rupert, I want to see Aileen Jocyln your wife. No, no; don't interrupt me, but believe me, I dislike match-making quite as cordially as you do; but my days on earth are numbered, and I must speak before it is too late. When we were abroad I thought there never would be occasion; when we returned home I thought so, too. Rupert, I have ceased to think so since May Everhard's return."
The young man's face flushed suddenly and hotly, but he made no reply.
"How any man in his senses could possibly prefer May to Aileen, is a mystery I cannot solve; but then these things puzzle the wisest of us at times. Mind, my boy, I don't really say you do prefer May – I should be very unhappy if I thought so. I know – I am certain you love Aileen best; and I am equally certain she is a thousand times better suited to you. Then, as a man of honor, you owe it to her. You have paid Miss Jocyln such attentions as no honorable gentleman should pay any lady, save the one he means to make his wife."
Lady Thetford's son rose abruptly, and stood leaning against the mantle, looking into the fire.
"Rupert, tell me truly, if May Everard had not come here, would you not ere this have asked Aileen to be your wife?"
"Yes – no – I don't know! Mother!" the young man cried, impatiently, "what has May Everard done that you should treat her like this?"
"Nothing; and I love her dearly, and you know it. But she is not suited to you – she is not the woman you should marry."
Sir Rupert laughed – a hard strident laugh.
"I think Miss Everard is much of your opinion, my lady. You might have spared yourself all these fears and perplexities, for the simple reason that I should have been refused had I asked."
"Rupert?"
"Nay, mother mine, no need to wear that frightened face. I haven't asked Miss Everard in so many words to marry me, and she hasn't declined with thanks; but she would if I did. I saw enough to-day of that."
"Then you don't care for Aileen?" with a look of blank consternation.
"I care for her very much, mother; and I haven't owned to being absolutely in love with our pretty little May. Perhaps I care for one as much as the other; perhaps I know in my inmost heart she is the one I should marry. That is, if she will marry me."
"You owe it to her to ask her."
"Do I? Very likely; and it would make you happy, my mother?"
He came and bent over her again, smiling down in her wan, anxious face.
"More happy than anything else in this world, Rupert!"
"Then consider it an accomplished fact. Before the sun sets to-day Aileen Jocyln shall say yes or no to your son."
He bent and kissed her; then, without waiting for her to speak, wheeled round and strode out of the apartment.
"There is nothing like striking whilst the iron is hot," said the young man to himself, with a grim sort of smile, as he ran down-stairs.
Loitering on the lawn, he encountered May Everard, still in her riding-habit, surrounded by three or four poodle-dogs.
"On the wing again, Rupert? Is it for mamma? She is not worse?"
"No; I am going to Jocyln Hall. Perhaps I shall fetch Aileen back."
May's turquoise blue eyes were lifted with a sudden luminous, intelligent flash to his face.
"God speed you! You will certainly fetch Aileen back!"
She held out her hand with a smile that told him she knew all as plainly as he knew it himself.
"You have my best wishes, Rupert, and don't linger; I want to congratulate Aileen."
Sir Rupert's response to these good wishes was very brief and curt. Miss Everard watched him mount and ride off, with a mischievous little smile rippling round her rosy lips.
"My lady has been giving the idol of her existence a caudle lecture – subject, matrimony," mused Miss Everard, sauntering lazily along in the midst of her little dogs: "and really it is high time, if she means to have Aileen for a daughter-in-law, for the heir of Thetford Towers is rather doubtful that he is not falling in love with me; and Aileen is dreadfully jealous and disagreeable; and my lady is anxious and fidgeted to death about it; and – oh-h-h! good gracious!"
Miss Everard stopped with a shrill, feminine shriek. She had loitered down to the gates, where a young man stood talking to the lodge-keeper, with a big Newfoundland dog gamboling ponderously about him. The big Newfoundland made an instant dash into Miss Everard's guard of honor, with one deep, bass bark, like distant thunder, and which effectually drowned the yelps of the poodles. May flew to the rescue, seizing the Newfoundland's collar and pulling him back with all the might of two little white hands.
"You big, horrid brute!" cried May, with flashing eyes, "how dare you! Call off your dog, sir, this instant! Don't you see how he is frightening mine!"
She turned imperiously to the Newfoundland's master, the bright eyes flashing, the pink cheeks aflame – very pretty, indeed, in her wrath.
"Down, Hector!" called the young man, authoritatively; and Hector, like the well-trained animal he was, subsided instantly. "I beg your pardon, young lady! Hector, you stir at your peril, sir! I am very sorry he has alarmed you."
He doffed his cap with careless grace, and made the angry little lady a courtly bow.
"He didn't alarm me," replied May, testily; "he only alarmed my dogs. Why, dear me! how very odd!"
Miss Everard, looking full at the young man, had started back with this exclamation and stared broadly. A tall, powerful-looking young fellow, rather dusty and travel-stained, but eminently gentlemanly, with frank blue eyes and profuse fair hair, and a handsome, candid face.
"Yes, Miss May," struck in the lodge-keeper, "it is odd! I see it, too! He looks enough like Sir Noel, dead and gone, to be his own son!"
"I beg your pardon," said May, becoming conscious of her wide stare, "but is your name Legard, and are you a friend of Sir Rupert Thetford?"
"Yes, to both questions," with a smile that May liked. "You see the resemblance too, then. Sir Rupert used to speak of it. Is he at home?"
"Not just now; but he will be very soon, and I know will be glad to see Mr. Legard. You had better come in and wait."
"And Hector," said Mr. Legard. "I think I had better leave him behind, as I see him eying your guard of honor with anything but a friendly eye. I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Miss Everard? Oh!" laughing frankly at her surprised face, "Sir Rupert showed me a photograph of yours as a child. I have a good memory for faces, and knew you at once."
Miss Everard and Mr. Legard fell easily into conversation at once, as if they had been old friends. Lady Thetford's ward was one of those people who form their likes and dislikes at first sight, and Mr. Legard's face would have been a pretty sure letter of recommendation to him the wide world over. May liked his looks; and then he was Sir Rupert's friend, and she was never over particular about social forms and customs; and so they dawdled about the grounds and through the leafy arcades, in the genial sunshine, talking about Sir Rupert and Rome, and art and artists, and the thousand and one things that turn up in conversation; and the moments slipped by, half hour followed half hour, until May jerked out her watch at last, in a sudden fit of recollection, and found, to her consternation, it was past two.
"What will mamma say!" cried the young lady, aghast. "And Rupert; I dare say he's home to luncheon before this. Let us go back to the house, Mr. Legard. I had no idea it was half so late."
Mr. Legard laughed frankly.
"The honesty of that speech is the highest flattery my conversational powers ever received, Miss Everard. I am very much obliged to you. Ah! by Jove! Sir Rupert himself!"
For riding slowly up under the sunlit trees came the young baronet. As Mr. Legard spoke, his glance fell upon them, the young lady and gentleman advancing so confidentially with half a dozen curly poodles frisking about them. To say Sir Rupert stared would be a mild way of putting it – his eyes opened in wide wonder.
"Guy Legard!"
"Thetford! My dear Sir Rupert!"
The baronet leaped off his horse, his eyes lighting, and shook hands with the artist, in a burst of heartiness very rare with him.
"Where in the world did you drop from, and how under the sun did you come to be like this with May?"
"I leave the explanation to Mr. Legard," said May, blushing a little under Sir Rupert's glance, "whilst I go and see mamma, only premising that luncheon hour is past, and you had better not linger."
She tripped away, and the two young men followed more slowly into the house. Sir Rupert led his friend to his studio, and left him to inspect the pictures.
"Whilst I speak a word to my mother," he said; "it will detain me hardly an instant."
"All right!" said Mr. Legard, boyishly. "Don't hurry yourself on my account, you know."
Lady Thetford lay where her son had left her – lay as if she had hardly stirred since. She looked up and half rose as he came in, her eyes painfully, intensely anxious. But his face, grave and quiet, told nothing.
"Well," she panted, her eyes glittering.
"It is well, mother. Aileen Jocyln has promised to become my wife."
"Thank God!"
Lady Thetford sunk back, her hands clasped tightly over her heart, its loud beating plainly audible. Her son looked down at her, his face keeping its steady gravity – none of the rapture of an accepted lover there.
"You are content, mother?"
"More than content, Rupert. And you?"
He smiled and, stooping, kissed the warm, pallid face. "I would do a great deal to make you happy, mother; but I would not ask a woman I did not love to be my wife. Be at rest; all is well with me. And now I must leave you, if you will not go down to luncheon."
"I think not; I am not strong to-day. Is May waiting?"
"More than May. A friend of mine has arrived, and will stay with us for a few weeks."
Lady Thetford's face had been flushed and eager, but at the last words it suddenly blanched.
"A friend, Rupert! Who?"
"You have heard me speak of him before," he said carelessly; "his name is Guy Legard."