“There is something odd about it all,” said Arthur, who was inclined to indulge a good deal of curiosity about other people’s affairs: “but I think Conrad behaves the better of the two.”
Monica quietly assented; but perhaps she might have changed her opinion had she heard the muttered threats breathed by Conrad as he rode across the darkening moor:
“So, Randolph Trevlyn, our paths have crossed once more! I have vowed vengeance upon you to your very face, and perhaps my day has come at last. I see through you. I see the game you are playing. I will baulk you, if I can; but in any case I will have my revenge.”
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
SUNDAY AT TREVLYN
It was Sunday, and Monica, with Randolph beside her, was making her way by the path along the cliff towards the little old church perched high upon the crags, between Trevlyn and St. Maws, but nearer to the town than the Castle. Randolph had found out the ways of the house by this time. He knew now that Monica played the organ in the little church, that she started early and walked across the downs, instead of going in the carriage with her father and aunt. He knew that she generally lunched with the Pendrills between services, and that one of her cousins walked back with her to the Castle, and spent an hour with Arthur afterwards.
He had found out all this during his first two Sundays, and upon the third he had ventured to ask permission to be her escort.
Randolph was quite aware that he had lost ground with Monica of late; that the barrier, partially broken down during the week of anxiety about Arthur, had risen up again as impenetrably as ever. How far Sir Conrad Fitzgerald’s appearance upon the scene was to blame for this he could not tell, nor could Monica herself have explained; but there was no mistaking the added coldness on her part, and the sense of restraint experienced in his presence.
And yet he was conscious that his love for her increased every day, and that no coldness on her part checked or dwarfed its growth. He sometimes wondered at himself for the depth and intensity of his passion, for he was a man who had passed almost unscathed heretofore from the shafts of the blind god, nor was he by nature impulsive or susceptible. But then Monica was like no woman he had ever met before, and from the very first she had exercised a curious fascination over him. Also their relative positions were peculiar; she the daughter and he the heir of the old earl, whose life was evidently so very frail. Randolph had a shrewd idea that his kinsman had little to leave apart from the entail, and in the event of his death what would become of the fair girl his daughter? Would it be her fate to be placed in the keeping of that worldly spinster, the Lady Diana? Randolph’s whole soul revolted from such an idea.
So, altogether, his interest in Monica was hardly more than natural, and his sense of protecting championship not entirely uncalled for. One thing he had resolutely determined upon – that she should never suffer directly or indirectly on his account. He had made no definite plans as regarded the future, but on that point his mind was made up.
To-day, for the first time, he ventured to allude to a subject hitherto never touched upon between them.
“You have a very beautiful home, Lady Monica,” he said. “It is no wonder that you love it.”
Her glance met his for a moment, and then her eyes dropped again.
“Is it true that you have never left Trevlyn all your life?”
“Except for a few days with Arthur, never.”
“You have never seen London?”
“No, never,” very emphatically.
“Nor wish to do so?”
“No.”
He mused a little. Somehow it was more difficult than he had believed to convey to her the information he had desired to hint at. He entered upon another topic.
“Have you ever been advised, Lady Monica, to try what the German baths could do for Arthur? Very wonderful cures sometimes are accomplished there.”
She raised her head suddenly, with something of a flash in her eyes.
“Tom Pendrill has been talking to you!”
“Indeed, no.”
“That is what he wants – what he is always driving at. He does not care how my poor boy suffers, if only he has the pleasure of experimenting upon him for the benefit of science. I will not have it. It would kill him, it would kill me. You do not know how he suffers in being moved; a journey like that would be murder. He can live nowhere but at Trevlyn – Trevlyn or the neighbourhood, at least. Promise me never to suggest such a thing, never to take sides against me in it. Mr. Trevlyn, I appeal to your honour and your humanity. Promise me never to league with Tom Pendrill to send Arthur away to die!”
He had never seen her so vehement or excited. He was astonished at the storm he had aroused.
“Indeed, Lady Monica, you may trust me,” he said. “I have not the least wish to distress you, or to urge anything in opposition to your wishes. The idea merely occurred to me, because I happen to have heard of many wonderful cures. But I will never allude to the subject again if it distresses you. It is certainly not for me to dictate to you as to the welfare of your brother.”
The flush of excitement had faded from Monica’s face. She turned it towards him with something of apology and appeal.
“Forgive me if I spoke too hastily,” she said, with a little quiver in her voice which he thought infinitely pathetic, “but I have so few to love, and the thought of losing them is so very sad. And then Tom has so often frightened me about Arthur and taking him away; and I know that I understand him better than anybody else, though I am not a doctor, nor a man of science.”
He looked at her with grave sympathy.
“I think that is highly possible, Lady Monica. You may trust me to say or do nothing that could give you anxiety or pain.”
“Thank you,” answered Monica with unusual gentleness. “I do trust you.”
His heart thrilled with gladness at those simple words. They had almost reached the church now, and Monica paused at the edge of the cliff, turning her gaze seawards, a strange, sad wistfulness upon her face.
Her companion watched her in silence.
“There will be a storm before long,” she said at last.
The air was curiously clear and still, and the sea the same; yet there was a sullen booming sound far below that sounded threatening and rather awful.
“You are weather-wise, Lady Monica?” he asked with a smile.
“I ought to be,” she answered, turning away at length with a long drawn breath. “I know our sea so well, so very well.”
And then she walked on and entered the church by her own little door, leaving Randolph musing alone without.
He, too, lunched with the Pendrills that day. He had been over several times to see them since his arrival at Trevlyn, and had made his way in that house as successfully as he had done at the Castle.
Tom walked with him to church for the afternoon service. He spoke of Monica with great frankness.
“I have always likened her to a sort of Undine,” he remarked, “though not in the generally accepted sense. There are latent capacities within her that might make her a very remarkable woman; but half her nature is sleeping still. According to the tradition, love must awake the slumbering soul. I often think it is that which wanted to transform and humanise my Lady Monica.”
Randolph was silent. The smallest suspicion of criticism of Monica jarred upon him. Tom saw this, and smiled to himself.
They reached the little cliff church long before the rustic congregation had begun to assemble. The sound of the organ was audible from within.
Tom laid his fingers on his lips and made a sign to his companion to follow him. They softly mounted a little quaint stairway towards the organ loft, and reached a spot where, hidden themselves by the dark shadows, they could watch the player as she sat before the instrument.
Monica had taken off her heavily-plumed hat, and the golden sunshine glowed about her fair head in a sort of mist of liquid brightness. Her face wore a dreamy, softened look, pathetically sad and sweet. Her lustrous dark eyes were full of feeling. It seemed as if she were breathing out her soul in the sweet, low strains of music that sounded in the air.
Randolph gazed for one long minute, and then silently withdrew; it seemed a kind of sacrilege to take her unawares like that, when she was unconscious of their presence.
“Saint Cecilia!” he murmured softly, as he descended the stairs once again. “Monica, my Monica! will you ever be mine in reality? Will you ever learn to love me?”
Monica’s face still wore its softened dreamy look as she joined Randolph at the close of the service. Music exercised a strange power over her, raising her for a time above the level of the region in which she moved at other times. She looked pale and a little tired, as if the strain of the week of anxiety about Arthur had not yet quite passed off. As they reached the top of the down and turned the angle of the cliff, the wind, which had been gradually rising all day and now blew half a gale, struck them with all its force, and Monica staggered a little beneath its sudden fury.
“Take my arm, Lady Monica,” said Randolph. “This is too much for you.”
“Thank you,” she answered, gently; and a sudden thrill ran through Randolph’s frame as he felt the clinging pressure of her hand upon his arm, and was conscious that she was grateful for the strong support against the fury of the elements.
“It will be a dreadful night at sea,” said the girl presently, when a lull in the wind made speech more easy. “Look at the waves now? Are they not magnificent?”
The sea was looking very wild and grand; Randolph halted a moment beneath the shelter of a projecting crag, and gazed at the tempest-tossed ocean beneath.
“You like a storm at sea, Lady Monica?”
She looked at him with a sort of horror in her eyes.
“Like a storm!”
“You were admiring the grandeur of the sea just now.”
“Ah, you do not understand!” she said, and gazed out before her, a far-away look in her eyes. Presently she spoke again, looking at him for a moment with a world of sadness in her eyes, and then away over the tossing sea. “It is all very grand, very beautiful, very wonderful; but oh, so cruel, so pitiless in its strength and beauty! Think of the sailors, the fishermen out on the sea on a night like this, and the wives and mothers and little children, waiting at home for those who, perhaps, will never come back again. You do not understand. You belong to another world. You are not one of us. I have been down amongst them on wild, stormy nights. I have paced the beach with weeping women, watching, waiting for the boats that never came back, or came only to be dashed in pieces against the cruel rocks before our very eyes.” She paused a moment, and he felt her shudder in every limb; but her voice was still low and quiet, just vibrating with the depth of her feelings, but very calm and even. “I have seen boats go down within sight of home, within sound of our voices, almost within reach of our outstretched hands – almost, but not quite; and I have seen brave men, men I have known from childhood, swept away to their death, whilst we – their wives, their mothers, and I – have stood at the water’s edge, powerless to succour them. Ah, you do not, you cannot understand! I have seen all that, and more – and you ask me if I like a storm at sea!”
She stood very still for a few seconds, and then took his arm again.
“Let us go home,” she said, drooping a little as the wind met them once more. “I am so tired.”
He sheltered her all he could against the fury of the gale, and presently they were able to seek the shelter of the pine wood as they neared the Castle. Monica’s face was very pale, and he looked at her with a gentle concern that somehow in no wise offended her.
“You are very tired,” he said, compassionately. “The walk has been too much for you.”
“Not the walk exactly,” answered Monica, with a little falter in her voice; “it was the music and the storm together, I think. I am glad we sung the hymn for those at sea to-night.”
He looked down at her earnestly.
“And yet the sea is your best friend, Lady Monica. You have told me so yourself.” She looked at him with strange, wistful intensity.
“Yes, it is, it is,” she answered; “my best and earliest friend; and yet – and yet – ”
She paused, falling into a deep reverie; he roused her by a question:
“Yet what, Lady Monica?”
Again that quick, strange glance.
“Do you believe in presentiments?”
“I am not sure that I do.”
“Ah! then you cannot be a true Trevlyn. We Trevlyns have a strange forecasting power. Coming events cast their shadow over us, and we feel it – we feel it!”
He had never seen her in this mood before. He was intensely interested.
“And you have a presentiment, Lady Monica?”
She bent her head, but did not speak.
“And having said so much, will you not say more, and tell me what it is?”
She stopped still, looked earnestly at him for a moment, and then passed her hand wearily across her face.
“Sometimes I think,” she said, “that it will be the great sea, my childhood’s friend, that will bring to me the greatest sorrow of my life; for is it not the emblem of separation? Please take me in now. I think a storm is very sad and terrible.”
He looked into her pale, sweet face, and perhaps there was something in his glance that touched her, for as they stood in the hall at last she looked up with a shadowy smile, and said:
“Thank you very much. You have been very kind to me.”
That smile and those few simple words were like a ray of sunlight in his path.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
IN PERIL
Perhaps there was some truth in what Monica had said about her ability to presage coming trouble. At least she was haunted just now by a strange shadow of approaching change that future events justified only too well.
She often caught her father’s glance resting upon her with a strange, searching wistfulness, with something almost of pleading and appeal in his face. She had a suspicion that Arthur sometimes looked at her almost in the same way, as if he too would ask some favour of her, could he but bring his mind to do so. She felt that she was watched by all the household, that something was expected of her, and was awaited with a sort of subdued expectancy; but the nature of this service she had not fathomed, and greatly shrank from attempting to do so. She told herself many times that she would do anything for those she loved, that no sacrifice would be too great which should add to or secure their happiness; but she did not fully understand what was expected of her; only some instinct told her that it was in some way connected with Randolph Trevlyn.
Sir Conrad Fitzgerald came from time to time to the Castle. He was cordially received by the Earl and Lady Diana, who had respected and liked his parents, and remembered him well as a fair-haired boy, the childish playfellow and friend of Monica and Arthur. Old feelings of intimacy sprang up anew after the lapse of time. It seemed as if he had hardly been more than a year or two away. It was difficult to realise that the young man was practically an entire stranger, of whose history they were absolutely ignorant.
Monica felt the change most by a certain instinctive and involuntary shrinking from Conrad that she could not in the least explain or justify. She wished to like him; she told herself that she did like him, and yet she was aware that she never felt at ease in his presence, and that he inspired her with a certain indescribable sense of repulsion, which, oddly enough, was shared by her four-footed friends, the dogs.
Monica had a theory of her own that dogs brought up much in human society became excellent judges of character, but if so, she ought certainly to modify some of her own opinions, for the dogs all adored Randolph, and welcomed him effusively whenever he appeared; but they shrank back sullenly when Conrad attempted to make advances, and no effort on his part conquered their instinctive aversion.
Conrad himself observed this, and it annoyed him. He greatly resented Randolph’s protracted stay at the Castle, as he detested above all things the necessity of encountering him.
“How long is that fellow going to palm himself upon your father’s hospitality?” he asked Monica one day, with some appearance of anger. He had encountered Randolph and the Earl in the park as he came up, and he was aware that the cold formality of the greeting which passed between them had not been lost upon the keen observation of the latter. “I call it detestable taste hanging on here as he does. When is he leaving?”
“I do not know. Father enjoys his company, and so does Arthur. I have not heard anything about his going yet.”
“Perhaps you enjoy his company too?” suggested Conrad, with a touch of insolence in his manner.
A faint flush rose in Monica’s pale face. Her look expressed a good deal of cool scorn.
“Perhaps I do,” she answered.
Conrad saw at once that he had made a blunder. Face and voice alike changed, and he said in his gentle, deprecating way:
“Forgive me, Monica. I had no right to speak as I did. It was rude and unjustifiable. Only if you knew as much as I do about that fellow, you would not wonder that I hate to see him hanging round you as he is doing now, waiting, as it were, to step into the place that is his by legal, but by no moral right. It would be hard to see anyone acting such a part. It is ten times harder when you know your man.”
Monica looked straight at Conrad.
“What do you know against Mr. Trevlyn? My father is acquainted with all his past history, and can learn nothing to his discredit. What story have you got hold of? I would rather hear facts than hints.”
Conrad laughed uneasily.
“I know that he is a cad, and a sneak, and a spy; but I have no wish to upset your father’s confidence in him. We were at Oxford together, and of course it was not pleasant to me to hear his boasting of his future lordship at Trevlyn. That was the first thing that made me dislike him. Later on I had fresh cause.”
Had Monica been more conversant with the family history, she would have known that this boasting could never have taken place, as Randolph had been far enough from the peerage at that time. As it was, she looked grave and a little severe as she asked:
“Did he do that?” and listened with instinctive repugnance to the details fabricated by the inventive genius of Conrad.
He next cleverly alluded again to his past follies, and appealed to Monica’s generosity not to change towards him because he had sinned.
“It is so hard to feel cast off by old friends,” he said, with a very expressive look at the girl. “I know what it is to see myself cold shouldered by those to whom I have learned to look up with reverence and affection. I have suffered very much from misrepresentation and hardness – suffered beyond what I deserve. I did fall once – I was sorely tempted, and I did commit one act of ingratitude and deceit that I have most bitterly repented of. I was very young and sorely tempted, and I did something which might have placed me in the felon’s dock, and would have done so had somebody not far away had his will. But I was forgiven by the man I had injured, and I have tried my utmost since to make atonement for the past. The hardest part of all has been to see myself scorned and contemned by those whose good-will I have most wished to win. Sometimes I have known sorrow that has been akin to despair. I have been met with coldness and disdain when most I needed help and sympathy. Monica, you will not help to push me back into the abyss? You will not help to make me think that repentance is in vain?”
She looked at him very seriously, her eyes full of a sort of thoughtful surprise.
“I, Conrad. What have I to do with it or with you?”
“This much,” he answered, taking her hand and looking straight into her eyes: “this much, Monica – that nothing so helps a man who has fallen once as the friendship of a noble woman like yourself; nothing hurts him more than her ill-will or distrust. Give me your friendship, and I will make myself worthy of it; turn your back coldly upon me, and I shall feel doomed to despair.”
“We have been friends all our lives, Conrad,” said Monica, with gentle seriousness. “You know that if I could help you in the way you mean I should like to do so.”
“You will not change – you will not turn your back upon me, whatever he may say of me?”
She looked at him steadily, and answered, “No.”
“You promise, Monica?”
“There is no need for that, Conrad. When I say a thing I mean it. We are friends, and I do not change without sufficient reason.”
He saw that he had said enough; he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it once with a humility and reverence that could not offend her. Monica wandered down by the lonely cliff path to the shore, revolving many thoughts in her mind, feeling strangely absorbed and abstracted.
The wind blew fresh and strong off the sea. The tide rolled in fast, salt, and strong. Monica felt that she wanted to be alone to-day – alone with the great wild ocean that she loved so well, even whilst she feared it too in its fiercer moods. She therefore made her way with the agility and sure-footed steadiness of long practice over a number of great boulders, and along a jutting ledge of rock that stretched a considerable distance out to sea – a sunken reef that had brought to destruction many a hapless fisherman’s craft, and more than one stately vessel.
At high tide it was covered, but it would not be high water for some hours yet, and Monica, in her restless state of mental tension, had forgotten that the high spring tides were lashing the sea to fury just now upon this iron-bound coast, rendered more swift and strong and high by the steady way in which the wind set towards the land.
Standing on the great flat rock at the end of the sunken reef, a rock that was never covered even at the highest tides, Monica was soon lost in so profound a reverie that time flew by unheeded; and only when the giant waves began to throw their spray about her feet as they dashed up against the rock, did she suddenly rouse up to the consciousness that for once in her life she had forgotten herself, and forgotten the uncertain temper of her tyrant playfellow, and had allowed her retreat to be cut off.
She looked round her quietly and steadily, not frightened, but fully conscious of her danger. The reef was already covered; it would be impossible to retrace her footsteps with the waves dashing wildly over the sunken rocks. Monica was a bold and practised swimmer, but to swim ashore in a heavy sea such as was now running was obviously out of the question. To stand upon that lonely rock until the tide fell again was a feat of strength and endurance almost equally impossible. Her best chance lay in being seen from the shore and rescued. Someone might pass that way, or even come in search of her. Only the daylight was already failing, and would soon be gone.
Monica looked round her, awed, yet calm, understanding, without realising, the deadly peril in which she stood. There was always a boat – her little boat – lying at anchor in the bay, ready for her use at any moment. Her eyes turned towards it instinctively, and as they did so she became aware of something bobbing up and down in the water – the head of a swimmer, as she saw the next moment, swimming out towards her boat.
Someone must have seen her, then, and as all the fishing-smacks were out, and there was no way of reaching the anchored boat, save by swimming, had elected to run some personal risk rather than waste precious time in seeking aid farther afield.
A glow of gratitude towards her courageous rescuer filled Monica’s heart, and this did not diminish as she saw the difficulty he had first in reaching the boat, then in casting it loose, and last, but not least, in guiding and pushing it towards an uncovered rock and in getting in. But this difficult and perilous office was accomplished in safety at last, and the boat was quickly rowed over the heaving, angry waves to the spot where Monica stood alone, amid the tossing waste of water.
Nearer and nearer came the tiny craft, and Monica experienced an odd sensation of mingled surprise and dismay as she recognised in her preserver none other than Randolph Trevlyn.
But it was not a time in which speeches could be made or thanks spoken. To bring the boat up to the rock in the midst of the rolling breakers was a task of no little difficulty and danger, and had not Randolph been experienced from boyhood in matters pertaining to the sea, he could not possibly have accomplished the feat unaided and alone. There was no bungling on Monica’s part, either. With steady nerve and quiet courage she awaited the moment for the downward spring. It was made at exactly the right second; the boat swayed, but righted itself immediately. Randolph had the head round in a moment away from the dangerous rock. In ten minutes they had reached the shore and had landed upon the beach.
Not a word had been spoken all that time. Monica had given Randolph one expressive glance as she took her seat in the boat, and that is all that had so far passed between them.
When, however, he gave her his hand to help her to disembark, and they stood together on the shingle, she said, very seriously and gently:
“It was very kind of you to come out to me, Mr. Trevlyn. I think I should have been drowned but for you,” and she turned her eyes seaward with a gaze that was utterly inscrutable.
He looked at her a moment intently, and then stooped and picked up his overcoat, which lay beside his pilot jacket and boots, upon the stones.
“Will you oblige me by putting this on in place of your own wet jacket? You are drenched with spray.”
She woke up from her reverie then, and looked up quickly, doing as he asked without a word; but when she had donned the warm protecting garment, she said:
“You are drenched to the skin yourself.”
“Yes, so a garment more or less is of no consequence. Now walk on, please; do not wait for me; I will be after you in two minutes.”
Again she did his bidding in the same dreamy way, and walked on towards the ascent by the steep cliff path. He was not long in following her, and they walked in almost unbroken silence to the Castle. When they reached the portal, Monica paused, and raised her eyes once more to his face.
“You have saved my life to-day,” she said. “I am – I think I am – very grateful to you.”
Arthur’s excitement and delight when he heard of the adventure were very great.
“So he saved you, Monica – at the risk of his life? Ah, that just proves it!”
“Proves what?”
“Why, that he is in love with you, of course, just as he ought to be, and will marry you some day, make us all happy; and keep us all at Trevlyn. What could be more delightful and appropriate?”
A wave of colour swept over Monica’s face.
“You are a foolish boy, Arthur.”
“I am not a foolish boy!” he answered, exultingly; “I know what I am saying. Randolph does love you; I can see it more plainly every day. He loves you with all his heart, and some day soon he will ask you to be his wife. Of course you will say yes – you must like him, I am sure, as much as every one else does; and then everything will come right, and we shall all be perfectly happy. Things always do come right in the end, if we only will but believe it.”
Monica sat very still, a strange, dream-like feeling stealing over her. Arthur’s playful words shed a sudden flood of light upon much that had been dark before, and for a moment she was blinded and dazzled.
Randolph Trevlyn loved her! Yes, she could well believe it, little as she knew of love, thinking of the glance bent upon her not long ago, which had thrilled her then, she knew not why.
Monica trembled, yet she was dimly conscious of a strange under-current of startled joy beneath the troubled waters of doubt, despondency, and perplexity. She could not understand herself, nor read her heart aright, yet it seemed as if through the lifting of the clouds, she obtained a rapid passing glimpse of a land of golden sunshine beyond, whither her face and footsteps alike were turned – as a traveller amid the mountain mists sees before him now and again the bright sunny smiling valley beneath which he will shortly reach.