Part 3

Finding his way to Arthur’s room towards dusk one day, as he often did, he was surprised to find quite a little group around the glowing fire. Monica and the dogs were objects sufficiently familiar to him by this time, but who was that graceful, fair-haired youth who sat beside the girl, his face turned towards her and away from Randolph, whilst he made some gay, laughing rejoinder to her in a very sweet, musical voice?

Randolph recognised that laugh and that voice with another start of dismay. His face set itself in very stern lines, and he would have withdrawn in silence had he been able to do so unobserved; but Arthur saw him as he moved to go, and cried gladly:

“Oh, here is Randolph—that is right. Our old friend and our new one must be introduced. Sir Conrad Fitzgerald—Mr. Randolph Trevlyn.”

Randolph’s eyes were fixed full upon the face of the younger man as 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.”

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.