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."