Monica, Volume 2 (of 3)

“I was with him to the end. I need hardly say that Fitzgerald did not attempt to come near him. He was plunged in a round of riotous dissipation. Upon the day following the funeral, I chanced to come upon him, surrounded by a select following of his boon companions. Can I bring myself to tell you what he was saying before he knew that I was within earshot? I need not repeat his words, Monica: they are not fit for your ears. Suffice it to say that he was passing brutal jests upon the man who had just been laid in his grave, and upon the young wife whose heart had been broken by his own base and cruel slanders. Coupled with these jests were disgraceful boastings, as unmanly and false as the lips that uttered them.

“I had in my hand a heavy riding-whip. I took him by the collar, and I made him recant each one of those cruel slanders he had uttered, and confess himself a liar and a villain. I administered, then and there, such a chastisement as I hope never to have to administer to any man again. No one interposed between us. I think even his chosen companions felt that he was receiving no more than his due. I thrashed him like the miserable hound he was. If it had been possible, I would have called him out and shot him like a dog.”

Randolph’s voice had not risen whilst he was speaking. He was very calm and composed as he told his story; there was no excitement in his manner, and yet his quiet, quivering wrath thrilled Monica more than the fiercest invective could have done.

“My whip broke at last. I flung him from me, and he lay writhing on the floor. But he was not past speech, and he had energy left still to curse me to my face, and to vow upon me a terrible vengeance, which should follow me all my life. He is trying now to keep this vow. History repeats itself you know. He ruined the happiness of one life, and brought about this tragedy, by poisoning the mind of a wife, and setting her against her husband; and I presume he thinks that experiment was successful enough to be worth repeating. There, Monica, I have said my say. You have now before you a circumstantial history of the past life of Sir Conrad Fitzgerald – your friend.”

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.

STORM AND CALM

Monica sat with her face buried in her hands, her whole frame quivering with emotion. Those last words of her husband’s smote her almost like a blow. She deserved them, no doubt; yet they were cruel, coming like that. He could not have spoken so if he loved her. He would not stand coldly aloof whilst she suffered, if he held her really dear. And yet, once he had almost seemed to love her, till she had alienated him by her pride and self-will. It was just, she admitted, yet, oh! it was very hard!

She sat, crushed and confounded, for a time, and it was only by a great effort that she spoke at all.

“I did not know, Randolph; I did not know. You should have told me before.”

“I believed you did know. You told me that you did.”

“Not that. Did you think I could know that and treat him as a friend? Oh, Randolph! how could you? You ought to have told me before.”

“Perhaps I ought,” he said. “But remember, Monica, I spoke out very plainly, and still you insisted that he was, and should continue to be, your friend – your repentant friend.”

Monica raised her eyes to her husband’s face, full of a sort of mute reproach. She felt that she merited the rebuke – that he might have said much more without being really harsh – and yet it was very hard, in this hour of their re-union, to have to hear, from lips that had never uttered till then anything but words of gentleness and love, these reproofs and strictures on her conduct. She saw that he was moved: that there was a repressed agitation and excitement in his whole manner; but she could not guess how deeply he had been roused and stirred by the careless jests he had heard passed that day, nor how burning an indignation he felt towards the man who had plotted to ruin his happiness.

“You should not have left me, Randolph,” said Monica, “if you could not trust me.”

He went up to her quietly, and took her hands. She stood up, looking straight into his eyes.

“I did trust you – I do trust you,” he answered, with subdued impetuosity. “Can I look into your face and harbour one doubt of your goodness and truth? I trust you implicitly; it is your judgment, not your heart, that has been at fault.”

She looked up gratefully, and drew one step nearer.

“And now that you have come back, all will be right again,” she said. “Randolph, I will never speak to that man again.”

His face was stern; it wore a look she did not understand.

“I am not sure of that,” he answered, speaking with peculiar incisiveness. “It may be best that you should speak to him again.”

She looked up, bewildered.

“Randolph, why do you say that? Do you think that, after all, he has repented?”

Randolph’s face expressed an unutterable scorn. She read the meaning of that glance, and answered it as if it had been expressed in words.

“Randolph, do you believe for a moment that I would permit any one to speak ill of you to me? Am I not your wife?”

His face softened as he looked at her, but there was a good deal of sadness there, too.

“I do not believe you would deliberately listen to such words from him; but are not poisoned shafts launched sometimes that strike home and rankle? Has no one ever come between you and me, since the day you gave yourself to me in marriage?”

He saw her hesitation, and a great sadness came into his eyes. How near she was and yet how far! His heart ached for her in her loneliness and isolation, and it ached for himself too.

Monica broke the silence first.

“Randolph,” she said timidly; “no harm has been done to you, really? He cannot hurt you; can he?”

His face was stern as he answered her.

“He will hurt me if he can – through my wife. His threat is still unfulfilled; but he knows where to plant a blow, how to strike in the dark. Yes, Monica, he has hurt me.”

She drew back a pace.

“How?”

“It hurts me to know that idle gossip connects my wife’s name with his – that he has the credit of being a lover, discarded only from motives of policy. I know that there is not a syllable of truth in these reports – that they have been set afloat by his malicious tongue. Nevertheless, they hurt me. They hurt me the more because my wife has given some countenance to such rumours, by permitting a certain amount of intimacy with a man whom her husband will not receive.”

Monica was white to the lips. She understood now, as she had never done before, what Cecilia Bellamy had meant by her flighty speeches a few hours before. They had disgusted and offended her then, now they appeared like absolute insults. Randolph saw the stricken look upon her face, and knew that she was cut to the quick.

“Monica,” he said, more gently, “what has been done can be undone by a little patience and self-control. We need not be afraid of a man like Sir Conrad. I have known him and his ways long. He has tried before to injure me without success. He has tried in a more subtle way this time; yet again I say, most emphatically, that he has failed.”

But Monica hardly heard. She was torn by the tumult of her shame and distress.

“Randolph!” she exclaimed, stretching out her hands towards him: “Randolph, take me home! oh! take me home, out of this cruel, cruel, wicked world! I cannot live here. It kills me; it stifles the very life out of me! I am so miserable, so desolate here! It is all so hard, and so terrible! Take me home! Ah! I was happy once!”

“I will take you to Trevlyn, Monica, believe me, as soon as ever I can; but it cannot be just yet. Shall I tell you why?”

She recoiled from him once more, putting up her hand with that instinctive gesture of distress.

“You are very cruel to me Randolph,” she said, with the sharpness of keen misery in her voice.

He stood quite still, looking at her, and then continued in the same quiet way:

“Shall I tell you why? I cannot take you away until we have been seen together as before. I shall go with you to some of those houses you have visited without me. We must be seen riding and driving, and going about as if nothing whatever had occurred during my absence. If we meet Fitzgerald, there must be nothing in your manner or in mine to indicate that he is otherwise than absolutely indifferent to us. I dare say he will put himself in your way. He would like to force upon me the part of the jealous, distrustful husband, but it is a rôle I decline to play at his bidding. I am not jealous, nor am I distrustful, and he and all the world shall see that this is so. If I take you away now, Monica, I shall give occasion for people to say that I am afraid to trust my wife in any place where she may meet Fitzgerald. Let us stay where we are, and ignore the foolish rumours he has circulated, and we shall soon see them drop into deserved oblivion.”

“Randolph, I cannot! I cannot!” cried Monica, who was now overwrought and agitated to the verge of exhaustion; “I cannot stay here. I cannot go amongst those who have dared to say such things, to believe such things of me. What does it matter what they think, when we are far away? Take me back to Trevlyn, and let us forget it all. Let me go, if only for a week. I have never asked you anything before. Oh! Randolph, do not be so hard! Say that you will take me home!”

“If I loved you less, Monica,” he answered, in a very low, gentle tone, “I should say yes. As it is, I say no. I cannot take you to Trevlyn yet.”

She turned away then, and left him without a word, passing slowly through the brilliantly-lighted room, and up the wide staircase. Randolph sat down and rested his head upon his hand, and a long-drawn sigh rose up from the very depths of his heart. This interview had tried him quite as much as it had done Monica – possibly even more.

“Perhaps, after all, Fitzgerald has revenged himself,” he muttered, “though not in a way he anticipated. Ah, Monica! my fair young wife, why cannot you trust me a little more?”

Monica trusted him far more than he knew. It was not in anger that she had left him. In the depth of her heart she believed that he had judged wisely and well; it was only the wave of home-sickness sweeping over her that had urged her to such passionate pleading. And then his strong, inflexible firmness gave her a curious sense of rest and confidence. She herself was so torn and rent by conflicting emotions, by bewilderment and uncertainty, that his resolute determination and singleness of purpose were as a rock and tower of defence. She had called him cruel in the keen disappointment of the moment, but she knew he was not really so. Home-sick, aching for Trevlyn as she was – irrepressibly as she shrank from the idea of facing those to whom she had given cause to say that she did not love her husband, she felt that his decision was right. It might be hard, but it was necessary, and she would go through her part unflinchingly for his sake. It was the least that she could do to make amends for the unconscious wrong she had done him.

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