Sir Noel's Heir Part 19

"I thought the likeness meant something," muttered the colonel; "his paternity is plainly enough written in his face. And so," raising his voice, "Mrs. Weymore recognized her son. Really, your story runs like a melodrama, where the hero turns out to be a duke and his mother knows the strawberry mark on his arm. Well, sir, if Mrs. Weymore is Sir Noel's rightful widow, and Guy Legard his rightful son and heir--pray what are you?"

The colorless face of the young man turned dark-red for an instant, then whiter than before.

"My, mother was as truly and really Sir Noel's wife as women can be the wife of man in the sight of Heaven. The crime was his; the shame and suffering hers; the atonement mine. Sir Noel's elder son shall be Sir Noel's heir--I will play usurper no longer. To-morrow I leave St.

Gosport; the day after, England--never, perhaps, to return."

"You are mad," Col. Jocyln said, turning very pale; "you do not mean it."

"I am not mad, and I do mean it. I may be unfortunate; but, I pray G.o.d, never a villain! Right is right; my brother Guy is the rightful heir--not I!"

"And Aileen?" Col. Jocyln's face turned dark and rigid as iron as he spoke his daughter's name.

Rupert Thetford turned away his changing face, quite ghastly now.

"It shall be as she says. Aileen is too n.o.ble and just herself not to honor me for doing right."

"It shall be as I say," returned Col. Jocyln, with a voice that rang and an eye that flashed. "My daughter comes of a proud and stainless race, and never shall she mate with one less stainless. Hear me out, young man. It won't do to fire up--plain words are best suited to a plain case. All that has pa.s.sed betwixt you and Miss Jocyln must be as if it had never been. The heir of Thetford Towers, honorably born, I consented she should marry; but, dearly as I love her, I would see her dead at my feet before she should mate with one who was nameless and impoverished.

You said just now the atonement was yours--you said right; go, and never return."

He pointed to the door; the young man, stonily still, took his hat.

"Will you not permit your daughter, Col. Jocyln, to speak for herself?"

he said, at the door.

"No, sir. I know my daughter--my proud, high-spirited Aileen--and my answer is hers. I wish you good-night."

He swung round abruptly, turning his back upon his visitor. Rupert Thetford, without one word, turned and walked out of the house.

The bewildering rapidity of the shocks he had received had stunned him--he could not feel the pain now. There was a dull sense of aching torture over him from head to foot--but the acute edge was dulled; he walked along through the black night like a man drugged and stupefied.

He was only conscious intensely of one thing--a wish to get away, never to set foot in St. Gosport again.

Like one walking in his sleep, he reached Thetford Towers, his old home, every tree and stone of which was dear to him. He entered at once, pa.s.sed into the drawing-room, and found Guy, the artist, sitting before the fire staring blankly into the coals, and May Everard roaming restlessly up and down, the firelight falling dully on her black robes and pale, tear-stained face. Both started at his entrance--all wet, and wild, and haggard; but neither spoke. There was that in his face which froze the words on their lips.

"I am going away to-morrow," he said, abruptly, leaning against the mantle, and looking at them with weird, spectral eyes.

May uttered a faint cry; Guy faced him almost fiercely.

"Going away! What do you mean, Sir Rupert? We are going away together, if you like."

"No; I go alone. You remain here; it is your place now."

"Never!" cried the young artist--"never! I will go out and die like a dog, in a ditch, before I rob you of your birthright!"

"You reverse matters," said Rupert Thetford; "it is I who have robbed you, unwittingly, for too many years. I promised my mother on her death-bed, as she promised my father on his, that you should have your right, and I will keep that promise. Guy, dear old fellow! don't let us quarrel, now that we are brothers, after being friends so long. Take what is your own; the world is all before me, and surely I am man enough to win my own way. Not one other word; you shall not come with me; you might as well talk to these stone walls and try to move them as to me.

To-morrow I go, and go alone."

"Alone!" It was May who breathlessly repeated the word.

"Alone! All the ties that bound me here are broken; I go alone and single-handed to fight the battle of life. Guy, I have spoken to the rector about you--you will find him your friend and aider; and May is to make her home at the rectory. And now," turning suddenly and moving to the door, "as I start early to-morrow, I believe I'll retire early.

Good-night."

And then he was gone, and Guy and May were left staring at each other with blank faces.

The storm of wind and rain sobbed itself out before midnight, and in the bluest of skies, heralded by banners of rosy clouds, rose up the sun next morning. Before that rising sun had gilded the tops of the tallest oaks in the park he, who had so lately called it all his own, had opened the heavy oaken door and pa.s.sed from Thetford Towers, as home, forever.

The house was very still--no one had risen; he had left a note to Guy, with a few brief, warm words of farewell.

"Better so," he thought--"better so! He and May will be happy together, for I know he loves her and she him. The memory of my leave-taking shall never come to cloud their united lives."

One last backward glance at the eastern windows turning to gold; at the sea blushing back the first glance of the day-king; at the waving trees and swelling meadows, and then he had pa.s.sed down the avenue, out through the ma.s.sive entrance-gates, and was gone.

CHAPTER XV.

AFTER FIVE YEARS.

Moonlight falling like a silvery veil over Venice--a crystal clear crescent in a purple sky shimmering on palace and prison, churches, squares and ca.n.a.ls, on the gliding gondolas and the flitting forms pa.s.sing like noiseless shadows to and fro.

A young lady leaned from a window of a vast Venetian hotel, gazing thoughtfully at the silver-lighted landscape, so strange, so unreal, so dream-like to her unaccustomed eyes. A young lady, stately and tall, with a pale, proud face, and a statuesque sort of beauty that was perfect in its way. She was dressed in trailing robes of c.r.a.pe and bombazine, and the face, turned to the moonlight, was cold and still as marble.

She turned her eyes from the moonlit ca.n.a.l, down which dark gondolas floated to the music of the gay gondolier's song; once, as an English voice in the piazza below sung a stave of a jingling barcarole--

"Oh! gay we row where full tides flow!

And bear our bounding pinnace; And leap along where song meets song, Across the waves of Venice."

The singer, a tall young man, with a florid face and yellow side-whiskers, an unmistakable son of the "right little, tight little"

island, paused in his song, as another man, stepping through an open window, struck him an airy, sledge-hammer slap on the back.

"I ought to know that voice," said the last comer.

"Mortimer, my lad, how goes it?"

"Stafford!" cried the singer, seizing the outstretched hand in a genuine English grip, "happy to meet you, old boy, in the land of romance! La Fabre told me you were coming, but who would look for you so soon! I thought you were doing Sorrento?"

"Got tired of Sorrento," said Stafford, taking his arm for a walk up and down the piazza; "there's a fever there, too--quite an epidemic--malignant typhus. Discretion is the better part of valor where Sorrento fevers are concerned. I left."

"When did you reach Venice?" asked Mortimer, lighting a cigar.

"An hour ago; and now who's here? Any one I know!"

"Lots. The Cholmonadeys, the Lythons, the Howards, of Leighwood; and, by-the-bye, they have with them the Marble Bride."

"The which?" asked Mr. Stafford.

"The Marble Bride, the Princess Frostina; otherwise Miss Aileen Jocyln, of Jocyln Hall Devonshire. You knew the old colonel, I think; he died over a year ago, you remember."