COLONEL JOCYLN.
Five miles away from Thetford Towers, where the multitudinous waves
leaped and glistened all day in the sun-light, as if a-glitter with
diamonds, stood Jocyln Hall. An imposing structure of red brick, not yet
one hundred years old, with sloping meadows spreading away into the blue
horizon, and densely wooded plantations gliding down to the wide sea.
Colonel Jocyln, the lord of the boundless meadows and miles of woodland,
where the red deer disported in the green arcades, was absent in India,
and had been for the past nine years. They were an old family, the
Jocylns, as old as any in Devon, and with a pride that bore no
proportion to their purse, until the present Jocyln, had, all at once
become a millionaire. A penniless young lieutenant in a cavalry
regiment, quartered somewhere in Ireland, with a handsome face and
dashing manners, he had captivated, at first sight, a wild, young Irish
heiress of fabulous wealth and beauty. It was a love-match on her
side--nobody knew exactly what it was on his; but they made a moonlight
flitting of it, for the lady's friends were grievously wroth. Lieutenant
Jocyln liked his profession for its own sake, and took his Irish bride
to India, and there an heiress and only child was born to him. The
climate disagreed with the young wife--she sickened and died; but the
young officer and his baby girl remained in India. In the fullness of
time he became Colonel Jocyln; and one day electrified his housekeeper
by a letter announcing his intention of returning to England with his
little daughter Aileen for good.
That same month of December, which took Lady Thetford on that mysterious
London journey, brought this letter from Calcutta. Five months after,
when the May primroses and hyacinths were all abloom in the green
seaside woodlands, Colonel Jocyln and his little daughter came home.
Early on the day succeeding his arrival, Colonel Jocyln rode through the
bright spring sunshine, along the pleasant high road between Jocyln Hall
and Thetford Towers. He had met the late Sir Noel and his bride once or
twice previous to his departure for India; but there had been no
acquaintance sufficiently close to warrant this speedy call.
Lady Thetford, sitting alone in her boudoir, looked in surprise at the
card the servant brought.
"Colonel Jocyln," she said, "I did not even know he had arrived. And to
call so soon--ah! perhaps he fetches me letters from India."
She rose at the thought, her pale cheeks flushing a little with
expectation. Mail after mail had arrived from that distant land,
bringing her no letter from Captain Everard.
Lady Thetford descended at once. She had few callers; but she was always
exquisitely dressed and ready to receive at a moment's notice. Colonel
Jocyln--tall and sallow and soldierly--rose at her entrance.
"Lady Thetford? Ah, yes! Most happy to see your ladyship once more.
Permit me to apologize for this very early call--you will overlook my
haste when you hear my reason."
Lady Thetford held out her white hand.
"Allow me to welcome you back to England, Colonel Jocyln. You have come
for good this time, I hope. And little Aileen is well, I trust?"
"Very well, and very glad to be released from shipboard. I need not ask
for young Sir Rupert--I saw him with his nurse in the park as I rode up.
A fine boy, and like you, my lady."
"Yes, Rupert is like me. And now--how are our mutual friends in India?"
The momentous question she had been longing to ask from the first; but
her well-trained voice spoke it as steadily as though it had been a
question of the weather.
Colonel Jocyln's face clouded, darkened.
"I bring bad news from India, my lady. Captain Everard was a friend of
yours?"
"Yes; he left his little daughter in my charge."
"I know. You have not heard from him lately?"
"No, and I have been rather anxious. Nothing has befallen the captain, I
hope?"
The well-trained voice shook a little despite its admirable training,
and the slender fingers looped and unlooped nervously her watch-chain.
"Yes, Lady Thetford; the very worst that could befall him. George
Everard is dead."
There was a blank pause. Colonel Jocyln looked grave and downcast and
sad.
"He was my friend," he said, in a low voice, "my intimate friend for
many years--a fine fellow and brave as a lion. Many, many nights we have
lain with the stars of India shining on our bivouac whilst he talked to
me of you, of England, of his daughter."
Lady Thetford never spoke, never stirred. She was sitting gazing
steadfastly out of the window at the sparkling sunshine, and Colonel
Jocyln could not see her face.
"He was as glorious a soldier as ever I knew," the colonel went on; "and
he died a soldier's death--shot through the heart. They buried him out
there with military honors, and some of his men cried on his grave like
children."
There was another blank pause. Still Lady Thetford sat with that fixed
gaze on the brilliant May sunshine, moveless as stone.
"It is a sad thing for his poor little girl," the Indian officer said;
"she is fortunate in having such a guardian as you, Lady Thetford."
Lady Thetford awoke from her trance. She had been in a trance, and the
years had slipped backward, and she had been in her far-off girlhood's
home, with George Everard, her handsome, impetuous lover, by her side.
She had loved him then, even when she said no and married another; she
loved him still, and now he was dead--dead! But she turned to her
visitor with a face that told nothing.
"I am so sorry--so very, very sorry. My poor little May! Did Captain
Everard speak of her, of me, before he died?"
"He died instantaneously, my lady. There was no time."
"Ah, no! poor fellow! It is the fortune of war--but it is very sad."
That was all; we may feel inexpressibly, but we can only utter
commonplaces. Lady Thetford was very, very pale, but her pallor told
nothing of the dreary pain at her heart.
"Would you like to see little May? I will send for her."
Little May was sent for and came. A brilliant little fairy as ever,
brightly dressed, with shimmering golden curls and starry eyes. By her
side stood Sir Rupert--the nine-year-old baronet, growing tall very
fast, pale and slender still, and looking at the colonel with his
mother's dark, deep eyes.
Colonel Jocyln held out his hand to the flaxen-haired fairy.
"Come here, little May, and kiss papa's friend. You remember papa, don't
you?"
"Yes," said May, sitting on his knee contentedly. "Oh, yes! When is papa
coming home? He said in mamma's letter he would fetch me lots and lots
of dolls and picture-books. Is he coming home?"
"Not very soon," the colonel said, inexpressibly touched; "but little
May will go to papa some day. You and mamma, I suppose?" smiling at Lady
Thetford.
"Yes," nodded May, "that's mamma, and Rupert's mamma. Oh! I am so sorry
papa isn't coming home soon! Do you know"--looking up in his face with
big, shining, solemn eyes--"I've got a pony, and I can ride lovely; and
his name is Snowdrop, because it's all white; and Rupert's is black, and
_his_ name is Sultan? And I've got a watch; mamma gave it to me last
Christmas; and my doll's name--the big one, you know, that opens its
eyes and says 'mamma' and 'papa'--is Sonora. Have you got any little
girls at home?"
"One, Miss Chatterbox."
"What's her name!"
"Aileen--Aileen Jocyln."
"Is she nice?"
"Very nice, I think."
"Will she come to see me?"
"If you wish it and mamma wishes it."
"Oh, yes! you do, don't you, mamma? How big is your little girl--as big
as me?"
"Bigger, I fancy. She is nine years old."
"Then she's as big as Rupert--_he's_ nine years old. May she fetch her
doll to see Sonora?"
"Certainly--a regiment of dolls, if she wishes."
"Can't she come to-morrow?" asked Rupert. "To-morrow's May's birthday;
May's seven years old to-morrow. Mayn't she come!"
"That must be as mamma says."
"Oh, fetch her!" cried Lady Thetford, "it will be so nice for May and
Rupert. Only I hope little May won't quarrel with her; she does quarrel
with her playmates a good deal, I am sorry to say."
"I won't if she's nice," said May; "it's all their fault. Oh, Rupert!
there's Mrs. Weymore on the lawn, and I want her to come and see the
rabbits. There's five little rabbits this morning, mamma--mayn't I go
and show them to Mrs. Weymore?"
Lady Thetford nodded smiling acquiescence; and away ran little May and
Rupert to show the rabbits to the governess.
Col. Jocyln lingered for half an hour or upward, conversing with his
hostess, and rose to take his leave at last, with the promise of
returning on the morrow with his little daughter, and dining at the
house. As he mounted his horse and rode homeward, "a haunting shape, an
image gay," followed him through the genial May sunshine--Lady Ada
Thetford, fair, and stately and graceful.
"Nine years a widow," he mused. "They say she took her husband's death
very hard--and no wonder, considering how he died; but nine years is a
tolerable time in which to forget. She took the news of Everard's death
very quietly. I don't suppose there was ever anything really in that old
story. How handsome she is, and how graceful!"
He broke off in his musing fit to light a cigar, and see through the
curling smoke dark-eyed Ada, mamma to little Aileen as well as the other
two. He had never thought of wanting a wife before, in all these years
of his widowhood; but the want struck him forcibly now.
"And Aileen wants a mother, and the little baronet a father," he
thought, complacently; "my lady can't do better."
So next day at the earliest possible hour, came back the gallant
colonel, and with him a brown-haired, brown-eyed, quiet-looking little
girl, as tall, every inch, as Sir Rupert. A little embryo patrician,
with pride in her infantile lineaments already, an uplifted poise of the
graceful head, a light, elastic step, and a softly-modulated voice. A
little lady from top to toe, who opened her little brown eyes in wide
wonder at the antics, and gambols, and obstreperousness, generally, of
little May.
There were two or three children from the rectory, and half a dozen from
other families in the neighborhood--and the little birthday feast was
under the charge of Mrs. Weymore, the governess, pale and pretty, and
subdued as of old. They raced through the leafy arcades of the park, and
gamboled in the garden, and had tea in a fairy summer house, to the
music of plashing fountains--and little May was captain of the band.
Even shy, still Aileen Jocyln forgot her youthful dignity, and raced and
laughed with the best.
"It was so nice, papa!" she cried rapturously, riding home in the misty
moonlight. "I never enjoyed myself so well. I like Rupert so
much--better than May, you know; May's so rude and laughs so loud. I've
asked them to come and see me, papa; and May said she would make her
mamma let them come next week. And then I'm going back--I shall always
like to go there."
Col. Jocyln smiled as he listened to his little daughter's prattle.
Perhaps he agreed with her; perhaps he, too, liked to go there. The
dinner-party, at which he and the rector of St. Gosport, and the
rector's wife were the only guests, had been quite as pleasant as the
birthday fete. Very graceful, very fair and stately, had looked the lady
of the manor, presiding at her own dinner-table. How well she would look
at the head of his.
The Indian officer, after that, became a very frequent guest at Thetford
Towers--the children were such a good excuse. Aileen was lonely at home,
and Rupert and May were always glad to have her. So papa drove her over
nearly every day, or else came to fetch the other two to Jocyln Hall.
Lady Thetford was ever most gracious, and the colonel's hopes ran high.
Summer waned. It was October, and Lady Thetford began talking of leaving
St. Gosport for a season; her health was not good, and change of air was
recommended.
"I can leave my children in charge of Mrs. Weymore," she said. "I have
every confidence in her; and she has been with me so long. I think I
shall depart next week; Dr. Gale says I have delayed too long."
Col. Jocyln looked up uneasily. They were sitting alone together,
looking at the red October sunset blazing itself out behind the Devon
hills.
"We shall miss you very much," he said, softly. "I shall miss you."
Something in his tone struck Lady Thetford. She turned her dark eyes
upon him in surprise and sudden alarm. The look had to be answered;
rather embarrassed, and not at all so confident as he thought he would
have been, Col. Jocyln asked Lady Thetford to be his wife.
There was a blank pause. Then,
"I am very sorry, Col. Jocyln, I never thought of this."
He looked at her, pale--alarmed.
"Does that mean no, Lady Thetford?"
"It means no, Col. Jocyln. I have never thought of you save as a friend;
as a friend I still wish to retain you. I will never marry. What I am
to-day I will go to my grave. My boy has my whole heart--there is no
room in it for anyone else. Let us be friends, Col. Jocyln," holding out
her white jeweled hand, "more, no mortal man can ever be to me."