he made the slightest possible inclination of the head. His hand
had unconsciously clenched itself in a gesture that was a little
significant. Monica’s eyes were fixed upon Conrad. Was it possible
that he quailed and flinched a little beneath the steady gaze bent
upon him? She did not think so, she was sure it could not be; no, he
was only drawing himself up to return that cold salutation with one
expressive of sovereign contempt.
Not a word was exchanged between the two men. Randolph sat down beside
Arthur, and began to talk to him. Conrad drew nearer to Monica, and
entered into a low-toned conversation with her. His voice sounded
tender and caressing, and ever and anon such words as these reached
young Trevlyn’s ears:
“Do you remember, Monica?”—“Ah, those sweet days of childhood!”—“You
have not forgotten?”—“How often have I thought of it all.”
Evidently they were discussing the happy past—the bright days that
had been shared by them before the cloud had fallen upon Monica’s
life. Randolph could not keep his eyes away from her face. It was
lit up with a new expression, half sad, and yet strangely—infinitely
sweet. Conrad’s face was very beautiful too, with its delicate, almost
effeminate colouring and serious, melancholy blue eyes. He had been a
lovely child, and his beauty had not faded with time. It had stood him
in good stead in many crises of his life, and was doing so still. There
is an irrational association in most minds between beauty and goodness.
But Randolph’s face grew more and more dark as he watched the pair
opposite. Old memories were stirring within him, and at last he rose
and quitted the room, feeling that he could no longer stand the
presence of that man within it, could no longer endure to see him
bending over Monica, and talking to her in that soft, caressing way.
Conrad looked after him, a vindictive light in his soft blue eyes. As
the door closed he uttered a low laugh.
“What is it?” asked Arthur.
“Oh, nothing. I was only wondering how long he would be able to brazen
it out?”
“Brazen what out?”
“Why, sitting there with my eye upon him. Couldn’t you see how restless
he got?”
“Restless!” repeated Arthur, quickly. “Why should he be restless?”
Conrad laughed again.
“Never mind, my boy. I bear him no malice. The least said the soonest
mended.”
Monica was silent and a little troubled. She liked to understand things
plainly. It seemed to her an unnatural thing for two men to be at
almost open feud, yet unwilling to say a word as to the cause of their
mutual antagonism. She thought that if they met beneath her father’s
roof they should be willing to do so as friends.
Her gravity did not escape Conrad’s notice.
“Has he been maligning me already?” he asked, suddenly, with a subdued
flash in his eyes.
“No,” answered Monica, with a sort of involuntary coldness. “He has
not said a word. I do not think,” she added presently, with a gentle
dignity of manner, “that I should listen very readily from the lips of
a stranger to stories detrimental to an old companion and playmate,
told behind his back.”
Conrad gave her a look of humble gratitude. He would have taken
her hand and kissed it had she been anybody else, but somehow,
demonstrations of such a kind always seemed impossible where Monica was
concerned. Even to him she was decidedly unapproachable.
“It is good indeed of you to say so,” he said; “but, Monica—I may call
you Monica still, may I not? as I have always thought of you all these
long years—you might hear stories to my detriment that would not be
untrue. There have been faults and follies and sins in my past life
that I would gladly blot out if I could. I have been wild and reckless
often. I lost my parents very young, as you know, and it is hard for
a boy without home and home influences to grow up as he should do.”
Conrad paused, and then added, with a good deal of feeling: “Monica,
can a man do more than repent the past? Can nothing ever wipe away the
stain, and give him back his innocence again? Must he always bear about
the shadow of sorrow and shame?”
Monica’s face was grave and thoughtful. She shook her head as she
replied:
“It is no use coming to me with hard questions, Conrad; I know so
little, so very little of the world you live in. Yet it seems to me
that it would be hard indeed if repentance did not bring forgiveness
in its wake.”
“‘Who with repentance is not satisfied,
Is not of heaven nor of earth.’”
quoted Arthur, lazily. “What is it you have done? Can’t you tell us all
the story, and let us judge for ourselves—old friends and playmates as
we are?”
“I should like to,” answered Conrad, gently. “Some day I will; but do
not let us spoil this first meeting with bitter memories. Let it be
enough for me to have come home, and have found my friends unchanged
towards me. May I venture still to call you my friends?”
“To be sure,” cried Arthur, readily; but Conrad’s eyes were fixed on
Monica’s face; and she saw it, and looked back at him with her steady,
inscrutable gaze.
“I do not think I change easily,” she said, with her gentle dignity
of manner. “You were my friend and playmate in our happy childhood. I
should like to think of you always as a friend.”
“Of course,” put in Arthur, gaily; “of course we are all friends, and
you must make friends with Randolph, too. He is such a good fellow.”
“I have no objection at all,” answered Conrad, with a short laugh. “The
difficulty, I imagine, will be on his side. Some men never forget or
forgive any one who succeeds in finding them out.”
“Oh, we will manage Randolph, never fear. You are ready, then, to make
it up if he is?”
“Most certainly,” was the ready answer.
“He is the nobler man of the two,” said Monica to herself—at least
her reason and judgment said so; her instinct, oddly enough, spoke in
exactly opposite words; but surely it was right to listen first to the
voice of reason.
“I say, Randolph,” said Arthur, half an hour later, when the young
baronet had taken his departure and the other guest had returned to the
invalid’s room. “Conrad is quite willing to make it up with you.”
Randolph’s smile was a little peculiar.
“Sir Conrad Fitzgerald is very kind.”
“Well, you know, it’s always best to make friends, isn’t it? Deadly
feuds are a nuisance in these days, don’t you think so?”
Randolph smiled again; but his manner was certainly a little baffling.
“Come now, Randolph,” persisted Arthur, with boyish insistence, “you
won’t hang back now that he is ready for the reconciliation. He is the
injured party, is he not?”
There was rather a strange light in Randolph’s dark blue eyes. His
manner was exceedingly quiet, yet he looked as if he could be a little
dangerous.
“Possibly,” was the rather inconclusive answer.
“You know he has come to stay some little time in the neighbourhood,
and he will often be here. It will be so awkward if you are at daggers
drawn all the time.”
“My dear boy, you need not put yourself about. I will take care that
there shall be no annoyance to anybody.”
“You will make friends, then?”
“I will meet Sir Conrad Fitzgerald, whenever he is your father’s guest,
with the courtesy due from one man to another, when circumstances bring
them together beneath the roof of the same hospitable host. But to take
his hand in reconciliation or friendship is a thing that I cannot and
will not do. Do you understand now?”
Arthur looked at him intently, as for once Monica was doing also.
“Randolph,” he said, a little inconsequently, “do you know I think I
could almost be afraid of you sometimes. I never saw you look before as
you looked just then.”
The stern lines on Randolph’s face relaxed a little but he still looked
grave and pre-occupied, sitting with his elbow on his knee, leaning
forward, and pulling his moustache with an abstracted air.
“You are rather unforgiving too, I think,” pursued the boy. “Conrad
admitted he had done wrong, but he is very sorry for the past; and I
think it is hard when old offences, repented of, are not consigned to
oblivion.”
Randolph was silent.
“Don’t you agree?”
Still only impenetrable silence.
“Come, Randolph, don’t be so mysterious and so revengeful. Let us have
the whole story, and judge for ourselves.”
“Excuse me, Arthur; but the life of Sir Conrad Fitzgerald is not one
that I choose to discuss. His affairs are no concern of mine, nor, if
you will pardon my saying so, any concern of yours, either. You are at
liberty to renew past friendship with him if it pleases you to do so;
but it is useless to ask me to do the same.”
And with that Randolph rose, and quitted the room without another word.
“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.”
[Illustration]
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.