"THERE IS MANY A SLIP."
A room that was like a picture--a carpet of rose-buds gleaming through
rich green moss, lounges piled with downy-silk pillows, a bed curtained
in foamy lace, a pretty room--Aileen Jocyln's _chambre-a-coucher_, and
looking like a picture herself, in a flowing morning-robe, the rich,
dark hair falling heavy and unbound to her waist, Aileen Jocyln lay
among piles of scarlet cushions, like some young Eastern Sultana.
Lay and music with, oh! such an infinitely happy smile upon her
exquisite face; mused, as happy youth, loving and beloved, upon its
bridal-eve doth muse. Nay, on her bridal-day, for the dainty little
French clock on the bracket was pointing its golden hands to three.
The house was very still; all had retired late, busy with preparations
for the morrow, and Miss Jocyln had but just dismissed her maid. Every
one, probably, but herself, was asleep; and she, in her unutterable
bliss, was too happy for slumber. She arose presently, walked to the
window and looked out. The late setting moon still swung in the sky; the
stars still spangled the cloudless blue, and shone serene on the purple
bosom of the far-spreading sea; but in the east the first pale glimmer
of the new day shone--her happy wedding day. The girl slid down on her
knees, her hands clasped, her radiant face glorified with love and
bliss, turned ecstatically, as some faithful follower of the prophet
might, to that rising glory of the east.
"Oh!" Aileen thought, gazing around over the dark, deep sea, the
star-gemmed sky, and the green radiance and sweetness of the earth,
"what a beautiful, blissful world it is, and I the happiest creature in
it!"
Kneeling there, with her face still turned to that luminous East, the
blissful bride fell asleep; slept, and dreamed dreams as joyful as her
waking thoughts, and no shadow of that sweeping cloud that was to
blacken all her world so soon fell upon her.
Hours passed, and still Aileen slept. Then came an imperative knock at
her door--again and again, louder each time; and then Aileen started up,
fully awake. Her room was flooded with sunshine, and countless birds
sang their glorias in the swaying green gloom of the branches, and the
ceaseless sea was all a-glitter with sparkling sun-light.
"Come in," Miss Jocyln said. It was her maid, she thought--and she
walked over to an arm-chair and composedly sat down.
The door opened, and Col. Jocyln, not Fanchon, appeared, an open note in
his hand, his face full of trouble.
"Papa!" Aileen cried, starting up in alarm.
"Bad news, my daughter--very bad! very sorrowful! Read that."
The note was very brief, in a spidery, female hand.
"DEAR COL. JOCYLN:--We are in the greatest trouble. Poor Lady
Thetford died with awful suddenness this morning in one of
those dreadful spasms. We are all nearly distracted. Rupert
bears it better than any of us. Pray come over as soon as you
can.
"MAY. EVERARD."
Aileen Jocyln sunk back in her seat, pale and trembling.
"Dead! Oh, papa! papa!"
"It is very sad, my dear, and very shocking and terribly unfortunate
that it should have occurred just at this time. A postponed wedding is
ever ominous of evil."
"Oh! pray, papa, don't think of that! Don't think of me! Poor Lady
Thetford! Poor Rupert! You will go over at once, papa, will you not?"
"Certainly, my dear. And I will tell the servants, so that when our
guests arrive you may not be disturbed. Since it was to be," muttered
the Indian officer under his moustache. "I would give half my fortune
that it had been one day later. A postponed marriage is the most ominous
thing under the sun."
He left the room, and Aileen sat with her hands clasped, and an
unutterable awe overpowering every other feeling. She forgot her own
disappointment in the awful mystery of sudden death. Her share of the
trial was light--a year of waiting, more or less; what did it matter,
since Rupert loved her unchangeably? but, poor Lady Aileen, remembering
how much the dead woman had loved her, and how fondly she had welcomed
her as a daughter, covered her face with her hands, and wept as she
might have wept for her own mother.
"I never knew a mother's love or care," Aileen thought; "and I was
doubly happy in knowing I was to have one at last. And now--and now----"
It was a drearily long morning to the poor bride elect, sitting alone in
her chamber. She heard the roll of carriages up the drive, the pause
that ensued, and then their departure. She wondered how _he_ bore it
best of all, May had said; but, then, he was ever still and strong and
self-restrained. She knew how dear that poor, ailing mother had ever
been to him, and she knew how bitterly he would feel her loss.
"They talk of presentiments," mused Miss Jocyln, walking wearily to and
fro; "and see how happy and hopeful I was this morning, whilst she lay
dead and he mourned. If I only dared go to him--my own Rupert!"
It was late in the afternoon before Col. Jocyln returned. He strode
straight to his daughter's presence, wearing a pale, fagged face.
"Well, papa?" she asked, faintly.
"My pale Aileen!" he said, kissing her fondly; "my poor, patient girl! I
am sorry you must undergo this trial, and," knitting his brows, "such
talk as it will make."
"Don't think of me, papa--my share is surely the lightest. But Rupert--"
wistfully faltering.
"There's something odd about Rupert; he was very fond of his mother, and
he takes this a great deal too quietly. He looks like a man slowly
turning to stone, with a face white and stern; and he never asked for
you. He sat there with folded arms and that petrified face, gazing on
his dead, until it chilled my blood to look at him. There's something
odd and unnatural in this frozen calm. And, oh! by-the-bye! I forgot to
tell you the strangest thing--May Everard it was told me; that painter
fellow--what's his name--"
"Legard, papa?"
"Yes, Legard. He turns out to be the son of Mrs. Weymore; they
discovered it last night. He was there in the room, with the most dazed
and mystified and altogether bewildered expression of countenance I ever
saw a man wear, and May and Mrs. Weymore sat crying incessantly. I
couldn't see what occasion there was for the governess and the painter
there in that room of death, and I said so to Miss Everard. There's
something mysterious in the matter, for her face flushed and she
stammered something about startling family secrets that had come to
light, and the over-excitement of which had hastened Lady Thetford's
end. I don't like the look of things, and I'm altogether in the dark.
That painter resembles the Thetford's a great deal too closely for the
mere work of chance; and yet, if Mrs. Weymore is his mother, I don't see
how there can be anything in _that_. It's odd--confoundedly odd!"
Col. Jocyln rumbled on as he walked the floor, his brows knitted into a
swarthy frown. His daughter sat and eyed him wistfully.
"Did no one ask for me, papa? Am I not to go over?"
"Sir Rupert didn't ask for you! May Everard did, and I promised to fetch
you to-morrow. Aileen, things at Thetford Towers have a suspicious look
to-day; I can't see the light yet, but I suspect something wrong. It may
be the very best thing that could possibly happen, this postponed
marriage; I shall make Sir Rupert clear matters up completely before my
daughter becomes his wife."
Col. Jocyln, according to promise, took his daughter to Thetford Towers
next morning. With bated breath and beating heart and noiseless tread,
Aileen Jocyln entered the house of mourning, which yesterday she had
thought to enter a bride. Dark and still, and desolate it lay, the
morning light shut out, unbroken silence everywhere.
"And this is the end of earth, its glory and its bliss," Aileen thought
as she followed her father slowly up-stairs, "the solemn wonder of the
winding-sheet and the grave."
There were two watchers in the dark room when they entered--May Everard,
pale and quiet, and the young artist, Guy Legard. Even in that moment,
Col. Jocyln could not repress a supercilious stare of wonder to behold
the housekeeper's son in the death-chamber of Lady Thetford. And yet it
seemed strangely his place, for it might have been one of those lusty
old Thetfords, framed and glazed up-stairs, stepped out of the canvas
and dressed in the fashion of the day.
"Very bad tastes all the same," the proud old colonel thought, with a
frown: "very bad taste on the part of Sir Rupert. I shall speak to him
on the subject presently."
He stood in silence beside his daughter, looking down at the marble
face. May, shivering drearily in a large shawl, and looking like a wan
little spirit, was speaking in whispers to Aileen.
"We persuaded Rupert--Mr. Legard and I--to go and lie down; he has
neither eaten nor slept since his mother died. Oh, Aileen! I am so sorry
for you!"
"Hush!" raising one tremulous hand and turning away; "she was as dear to
me as my own mother could have been! Don't think of me."
"Shall we not see Sir Rupert?" the colonel asked. "I should like to,
particularly."
"I think not--unless you remain for some hours. He is completely worn
out, poor fellow!"
"How comes that young man here, Miss Everard?" nodding in the direction
of Mr. Legard, who had withdrawn to a remote corner. "He may be a very
especial friend of Sir Rupert's--but don't you think he presumes on that
friendship?"
Miss Everard's eyes flashed angrily.
"No, sir! I think nothing of the sort! Mr. Legard has a perfect right to
be in this room, or any other room at Thetford Towers. It is by Rupert's
particular request he remains!"
The colonel frowned again, and turned his back upon the speaker.
"Aileen," he said, haughtily, "as Sir Rupert is not visible, nor likely
to be for some time, perhaps you had better not linger. To-morrow, after
the funeral, I shall speak to him very seriously."
Miss Jocyln arose. She would rather have lingered, but she saw her
father's annoyed face and obeyed him immediately. She bent and kissed
the cold, white face, awful with the dread majesty of death.
"For the last time, my friend, my mother," she murmured, "until we meet
in heaven."
She drew her veil over her face to hide her falling tears, and silently
followed the stern and displeased Indian officer down-stairs and out of
the house. She looked back wistfully once at the gray, old ivy-grown
facade; but who was to tell her of the weary, weary months and years
that would pass before she crossed that stately threshold again?
It was a very grand and imposing ceremonial, that burial of Lady
Thetford; and side by side with the heir walked the unknown painter, Guy
Legard. Col. Jocyln was not the only friend of the family shocked on
this occasion. What could Sir Rupert mean? And what did Mr. Legard mean
by looking ten times more like the old Thetford race than Sir Noel's own
son and heir?
It was a miserable day, this day of the funeral. There was a sky of lead
hanging low like a pall, and it was almost dark in the rainy afternoon
gloaming when Col. Jocyln and Sir Rupert Thetford stood alone before the
village church. Lady Thetford slept with the rest of the name in the
stony vaults; the fair-haired artist stood in the porch, and Sir Rupert,
with a face wan and stern, and spectral, in the dying daylight, stood
face to face with the colonel.
"A private interview," the colonel was repeating; "most certainly, Sir
Rupert. Will you come with me to Jocyln Hall? My daughter will wish to
see you."
The young man nodded, went back a moment to speak to Legard, and then
followed the colonel into the carriage. The drive was a very silent
one--a vague, chilling presentiment of impending evil on the Indian
officer as he uneasily watched the young man who had so nearly been his
son.
Aileen Jocyln, roaming like a restless ghost through the lonely, lofty
rooms, saw them alight, and came out to the hall to meet her betrothed.
She held out both hands shyly, looking up, half in fear, in the rigid,
death-white face of her lover.
"Aileen!"
He took the hands and held them fast a moment; then dropped them and
turned to the colonel.
"Now, Col. Jocyln."
The colonel led the way into the library. Sir Rupert paused a moment on
the threshold to answer Aileen's pleading glance.
"Only for a few moments, Aileen," he said, his eyes softening with
infinite love; "in half an hour my fate shall be decided. Let that fate
be what it may, I shall be true to you while life lasts."
With these enigmatical words, he followed the colonel into the library,
and the polished oaken door closed between him and Aileen.