Monica, Volume 3 (of 3)

“I will take you home now, Beatrice,” said Tom, curtly. “We are not wanted here.”

Monica looked questioningly at him, as she gave him her hand, to see what this abruptness might signify. He returned her gaze with equal intensity.

“I believe you are an angel, Monica,” he said, lifting her hand for a moment to his lips; “but there are moments when fallen mortals like ourselves feel the angelic presence a little overpowering.”

Monica, as she had said, wanted the help of some man of business, as there was a good deal to be done in connection with Conrad’s sudden death: a good many trying formalities to be gone through, as well as much correspondence, and in Lord Haddon she found an able and willing assistant.

He saw much of Monica in those days. He was often at Trevlyn – hardly a day passed without his riding or driving across on some errand – and she was often at St. Maws herself, for Beatrice’s momentary flash of anger had been rapidly quenched in deep contrition and humility; and both she and her husband treated Monica with the sort of reverential tenderness that seemed to meet her now on all hands.

Lord Haddon watched her day by day, wondering if ever he should dare to breathe a word of the hopes that filled his heart, reading in her calm face and in the sisterly gentleness and fondness with which she treated him, how little conscious she was of the purpose that possessed his soul. Sometimes he paused and shrank from troubling the still waters of their sweet, calm friendship, but then again the thought of leaving her in her loneliness and isolation seemed too sad and mournful, if by any devotion and love he could lighten the burden of her sorrow, and bring back something of the lost happiness into her life. Haddon was very humble, very self-distrustful; he did not expect to accomplish much, but he felt that he would gladly lay down his life, if by that act he could do anything to comfort her. To die for her would, however, be purposeless: the next thing was to try and live for her.

And so one day, as they paced the lonely shore together, on a chill cloudy winter’s afternoon, he put his fate to the touch.

She had noticed his silence – his abstraction: he had not been quite himself all day. Presently they reached a sheltered nook amongst some rocks not far from the water’s edge, and she sat down, motioning him to do the same. She looked at him with gentle, friendly concern.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked. “Have you something on your mind?”

He turned his head, looked into her eyes, and answered:

“Yes.”

“Can I help you?” she continued, in the same sweet way. “You help me so often, that it is my turn to help you now if I can.”

He looked with a glance she could not altogether understand.

“Monica,” he said, “may I speak to you? – may I tell you something? I have tried to do so before, and have failed; but I ought not to go on longer without speaking. Have I your permission to tell you what is on my mind?”

He did not often call her by her Christian name: only in moments of excitement, when his soul was stirred within him. The unconscious way in which it dropped now from his lips told that he was deeply moved. A sort of vague uneasiness arose within her, but she looked into his troubled, resolute face, and answered:

“Tell me if you wish it, Haddon” – although she shrank, without knowing why, from the confession she was to hear.

“Monica,” he said, not looking at her, but out over the sea, and speaking with a manly resolution and fluency unusual with him, the outcome of a very earnest purpose, “I am going to speak to you at last, and I must ask you beforehand to pardon my presumption, of which I am as well aware as you can ever be. Monica, I think that no woman in the wide world is like you. I have thought so ever since I saw you first, in your bridal robes, standing beside Randolph in that little church over yonder. When I saw you then – nay, pardon me if I pain you; I should not have recalled the memory, and yet I cannot help it – I said within myself that you were one to be worshipped with the truest devotion of a man’s heart; and the more I saw of you in later life, the deeper did that feeling sink into my soul. He, your husband, had been as a brother to me, and to feel that I was thus brought near to you, admitted to friendship and to confidence, was a source of keen pleasure such as I can ill describe. You did not know your power over me, Monica. I hardly knew it myself; but I think I would at any time have laid down my life either for him or for you. I know I would that fatal night – but I must not pain you more. When I awoke, Monica, from that long fever, to find you watching beside me, to hear that he, my friend, was dead, and you left all alone in your desolation – Monica, Monica, how can I hope to express to you what I felt? It is not treachery to his memory – believe me, it is not. If I could call him back, ah! how gladly would I do it! – at the cost of my life if need be – but that can never, never be! I know I can never fill his place. I know I am utterly unworthy of the boon I ask; but if a life-long devotion, if a love that will never change nor falter, if the ceaseless care of one, who is yours wholly and entirely, can ever help to fill the blank, can in ever so small a degree make up to you for that one irretrievable loss, believe me, it will be the greatest happiness I can ever know. Monica, need I say more? Have I said too much? I only ask leave to watch over you, to comfort you, to love you; I ask nothing for myself – only the right to do this. Can you not give it to me? God helping me, you shall never repent it if you do.”

A long pause followed this confession – this appeal. Monica’s face had expressed many fluctuating feelings as he had proceeded with his speech. Now it was full of a sort of divine compassion and tenderness: a look sometimes seen in a pictured saint or Madonna drawn by a master hand.

“You are so good,” she said, very low; “so very, very good; and it grieves me so sadly to give you pain.”

He turned his head and looked at her. His eyes darkened with sudden sorrow.

“I have spoken too soon,” he said, in the same gentle, self-contained way. “I have tried to be patient, but seeing you lonely and sad makes it so hard. I should have waited longer – it is only a year now since. Monica, do not think me hard or callous to say it, but time is a great softener – a great healer. I do not mean that you will ever forget; but years will go by, and you are still quite young, very young to live your life always alone. Think of the years that lie before you. Must they all be spent alone? Monica, do not answer me yet; but if in time to come – if you want a friend, a helper – let me – can you think of me? Ah! how can I say it? Can I ever be more to you than I am now? You understand: you have only to call me, to command me – I will come.”

He spoke with some agitation now, but it was quickly subdued. It seemed as if he would have left her, but she laid her hand upon his arm and detained him.

“Haddon,” she said, softly, “I am lonely and I do want a friend. You have been a friend to me always; I trust and love you as a brother. May I not do so always? Can you not be content with that? Must it end with us, that love and trust? I should miss it sorely if it were withdrawn.”

Her sweet, pleading face was turned towards him. There was a sort of struggle in the young man’s mind: then he answered quietly:

“It shall be so, if you wish it,” he said. “My chiefest wish is for your happiness. But – ”

She checked him by a look.

“Haddon, I am Randolph’s wife!”

His eyes gave the reply his tongue would never have uttered. She answered as if he had spoken.

“Yes, he is dead. Did you think that made any difference? Ah, you do not understand. When I gave myself to Randolph, I gave myself for ever – not for a time only but for always. He is my husband. I am his wife. Nothing can change that.”

“Not even death?”

The words were a mere whisper; yet she heard them. It seemed as if a sudden ray of light shone upon the face she turned towards him. He was awed; he watched her in mute silence.

“Ah! no,” she said, very softly, “not death – death least of all. Death can only divide us, it cannot touch our love. Ah! you do not know, you do not understand. How can I make it clear to you? Love is like nothing else in the world – it is us, our very selves. Somewhere– ” Monica clasped her hands together, and stretched them out before her towards the eternal ocean, with a gesture more eloquent than any words, whilst the light upon her face deepened in intensity every moment as her eyes fixed themselves upon the far horizon. “Somewhere he is waiting for me to come to him – he, my husband, my love; and though he may not come back to me, I shall go to him in God’s good time, and when I join him in the great, eternal home, I must go to him as he left me – with nothing between us and our love; and there will be no parting there, no more death, and no more sea.”

Her words died away in silence; but her parted lips, her shining eyes, the light upon her face, spoke an eloquent language of their own. Her companion sat and looked at her in mute, breathless silence, not unmixed with awe.

He knew his cause was lost. He knew she could never, never be his; yet, strange to say, he was not saddened or cast down, for by this revelation of her innermost heart he felt himself uplifted and ennobled. His idol was not shattered. Monica was, as ever, enshrined in his heart – the one ideal woman to be worshipped, reverenced, adored. Even in this supreme hour of his life, when the airy fabric of his dreams was crumbling into dust about him, he had a perception that perhaps even thus it was best. He never could be worthy of her, and now he might still call himself her friend; had she not said so herself?

There was a long, long silence between them. Then he moved, kneeling on one knee before her, and taking her hand in his.

“Monica,” he said, “I understand now. I shall never trouble you again. You have judged well, very well; it is like you, and that is enough. But before I go may I crave one boon?”

“And that is – ?”

“That you forget all that I have said, all the wild, foolish words that I have spoken; and let me keep my old place – as your brother and friend.”

She looked at him with her own gentle smile.

“I wish for nothing better,” she answered. “I cannot afford to lose my friend.”

He pressed her hand for one moment to his lips, and was gone without another word.

Tears slowly welled up in Monica’s eyes as she rose at last, and stood looking out over the vast waste of heaving grey sea – sad, colourless, troubled.

“Like my life,” she said softly to herself. And yet she had just put away a love that might at least have cast a glow upon it, and gilded its dim edges.

She stretched out her hand with a sort of mute gesture of entreaty.

“Ah! Randolph, husband, come back to me! I am so lonely, so desolate!”

Even as she spoke, the setting sun, as it touched the horizon, broke through the bank of cloud which had veiled it all the day, and flooded the sea as with liquid gold – that cold grey sea that she had just been likening to her own future life.

She could not help an involuntary start.

“Is it an omen?” she asked; and despite the heavy load at her heart, she went home somewhat comforted.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST.

CHRISTMAS