Monica, Volume 3 (of 3)

“Ah, yes! How could I help it?”

He fancied she spoke sadly, and would know why.

“I think I have been sad all day,” she answered; “I am often sad before a storm, when I hear the wind moaning round the house. It makes me think of the brave men at sea, and their wives waiting for them at home.”

There was a little quiver in her voice as she spoke the last words. Randolph heard it, and held her very close to him.

“It is not such a very bad night, Monica.”

“No; but it makes me think. When you are away, I cannot help feeling sad, often. Ah, my husband! how can I tell you all that you have been to me these happy, happy months?”

“My sweet wife!” he murmured, softly.

“And other wives love their husbands,” she went on in the same dreamy way, “and they see them go away over the dark sea, never to come back any more,” and she shivered.

“Let us go to the music-room, Monica,” said Randolph. “You shall play the hymn for those at sea.”

He knew the power of music to soothe her, when these strange moods of sadness and fear came upon her. They went to the organ together, and before half-an-hour had passed Monica was her own calm, serene self again.

“Monica,” said Randolph, “can you sing something to me now – now that we are quite alone together? Do you remember that little sad, sweet song you sang the night before I went away to Scotland? Will you sing it to me now? I have so often wanted to hear it again.”

Monica gave him one quick glance, and struck the preliminary chords softly and dreamily.

Wonderfully rich and sweet her voice sounded; but low-toned and deep, with a subtle searching sweetness that spoke straight to the heart:

“‘And if thou wilt, remember —
And if thou wilt, forget.’”

There was the least little quiver in her voice as it died into silence. Randolph bent over her and kissed her on the lips.

“Thank you,” he said. “It is a haunting little song in its sad sweetness. Somehow, it seems like you, Monica.”

But she made no answer, for at that moment a sound reached their ears that made them both start, listening intently. Monica’s face grew white to the lips.

The sound was repeated with greater distinctness.

“A gun!” said Randolph.

“A ship in distress!” whispered Monica.

A ship in distress upon that cruel, iron-bound coast – a pitch-dark night and a rising gale!

Randolph looked grave and resolute.

“We must see what can be done,” he said.

Monica’s face was very pale, but as resolute as her husband’s.

“I will go with you!” she said.

He glanced at, her, but he did not say her nay.

In the hall servants were gathering in visible excitement. Lord Haddon was there, and Beatrice. The distressing signals from the doomed vessel were urging their imperative message upon every heart. Faces were flushed with excitement. Every eye was turned upon the master of the house.

“Haddon,” he said, “there is not a man on the place that can ride like you, and you know every inch of the country by this time. Will you do this? – take the fastest, surest horse in the stable, and gallop to the nearest life-boat station. You know where it is? – Good! Give the alarm there, and get all in readiness. If the ship is past our help, and drifts with the wind, they may be able to save her crew still.”

Haddon stayed to ask no more. He was off for the stables almost before the words had left Randolph’s lips.

Monica was wrapping herself up in her warm ulster; Beatrice followed her example; the one was flushed, the other pale, but both were bent on the same object – they must go down to the shore to see what was done. They could not rest with the sound of those terrible guns ringing in their ears.

The night was pitchy black, the sky was obscured by a thick bank of cloud. The wind blew fierce and strong, what sailors would call “half a gale.” It was a wild, “dirty” night, but not nearly so bad a one as they often knew upon that coast.

The lanterns lighted them down the steep cliff-path, every foot of which, however, was well known to Monica. She kept close beside her husband. He gave her his hand over every difficult piece of the road, Beatrice followed a little more slowly. At last they all stood together upon the rocky floor of the bay.

Monica looked out to sea. She was the first to realise what had happened.

“She has struck on the reef!” she said. “She does not drift. She has struck!”

“And in such a sea she will be dashed to pieces in a very short time,” said Randolph, as another signal flashed out from the doomed vessel.

Other lights were moving about the shore. It was plain that the whole population of the little hamlet had gathered at the water’s edge. Through the gusts of rain they could see indistinctly moving figures; they could catch as a faint murmur the loud, eager tones of their voices.

“Stay here, Monica,” said Randolph, “under the shelter of this rock. I must go and see what is being done. Wait here for me.”

She had held fast by his arm till now! but she loosed his clasp as she heard these words.

“You will come back?” she said, striving to speak calmly and steadily.

“Yes, as soon as I can. I must see what can be done. There seems to be a boat. I must go and see if it cannot be launched. The sea in the bay is not so very wild.”

Randolph was gone already. Beatrice and Monica were left standing in the lee of a projection of the cliff. They thought they were quite alone. They did not see a crouching figure not many paces away, squeezed into a dark fissure of the rock. The night was too obscure to see anything, save where the flashing lights illumined the gloom. Even the wild beast glitter of a pair of fierce eyes watching intently passed unseen and unheeded.

Monica looked out to sea with a strange fixed yearning in her dark eyes. She was looking towards the vessel, struck fast upon the very rock where she had once stood face to face with death. How well she remembered that moment and the strange calmness that possessed her! She never realised the peril she was in – it had seemed a small thing to her then whether she lived or died. She recalled her feelings so well – was she really the same Monica who had stood so calmly there whilst the waves leaped up as if to devour her? Where was her old, calm indifference now? – that strange courage prompted by the want of natural love for life?

A sense of revelation swept over Monica at that moment. She had never really feared, because she had never truly loved. It was not death even now that she dreaded for herself, or for her husband, but separation. Danger, even to death, shared with him, would be almost welcome: but to think of his facing danger alone – that was too terrible. She pressed her hands closely together. It seemed as if her very soul cried to Heaven to keep away this dire necessity. Why she suspected its existence she could not have explained, but the shadow that had hung upon her all day seemed wrapping itself about her like a cloud.

“Monica, how you tremble!” said Beatrice. “Are you cold? Are you afraid?”

She was trembling herself, but it was with excitement and impatience.

Monica did not answer, and Beatrice moved a little away. She was too restless to stand still.

Monica did not miss her. A storm was sweeping over her soul – one of those storms that only perhaps come once in a life-time, and that leave indelible traces behind them. It seemed to her as if all her life long she had been waiting for this hour – as if everything in her past life had been but leading up to it.

Had she not known from her earliest childhood that some day this beautiful, terrible, pitiless sea was to do her some deadly injury – to wreck her life and leave her desolate? Ay she had known it always – and now – had the hour come?

Not in articulate words did Monica ask this question. It came as a sort of voiceless cry from the depths of her heart. She did not think, she did not reason – she only stood quite still, her hands closely clasped, her white face turned towards the sea, with a mute, stricken look of pain that yet expressed but a tithe of the bitter pain at her heart.