Monica, Volume 1 (of 3)

“He is old, then?”

“I fancy he is elderly, or at any rate middle-aged, or father would hardly care to have him on a visit. He must be younger than father, of course, but I do not know anything more about him. Oh, it will be very hard; but if he will only be good to Arthur, I will try to bear the rest.”

“I am sure you will, my Monica,” said Mrs. Pendrill tenderly. “I am sure you will never be ungenerous or act unworthily. A dark cloud seems hanging over your life, but there is light behind, though we cannot always see it. And, remember, my darling, that gold shines all the brighter for having been tried in the furnace.”

“I know the fellow,” said Tom Pendrill, an hour later, when Monica had gone, and he had heard from his aunt part of what had passed between them. “Monica is out about his age; he can’t be more than six or seven and twenty, and a right good fellow he is too, and would make my lady a capital husband, if he is not married already. Randolph Trevlyn was at Oxford; I knew him there pretty well, though he was only an undergraduate when I had taken my degree. The name sounded home-like, and I made friends with him. He wasn’t anywhere near the title then, but I suppose there have been deaths in the family since. Well, well, the earl is quite right to have him down, and if he could manage to fall in love with Monica and marry her, it would simplify matters wonderfully; but that wild bird will need a good deal of training before she will come at a husband’s call, and there is such a thing as spreading the snare too much in the sight of the quarry.”

No thought of this kind, however, entered into Monica’s head. She was far too unversed in the ways of the world to entertain the smallest suspicion of the hopes entertained on her account. She thought a good deal of the coming guest as the days went by – thought of him with bitterness, with aversion, with mistrust, but in the light of a possible husband – never for a single instant.

It was the day before the stranger was expected, and Monica, as the sun was sinking in the sky, was riding alone in the pine wood that surrounded the Castle. She was grave and pre-occupied, as she had been for the week past, haunted by the presage of coming sorrow and change. Her face was pale and sad, yet there was a wonderful depth of sweetness in its expression of wistful melancholy. The setting sun, slanting through the ruddy trunks of the tall pines, shone full upon her, lighting her golden hair, and making an aureole of glory round her head, showing off with peculiar clear distinctness the graceful outline of her supple figure and the beauty of the horse she rode.

She was in a very thoughtful mood, so absent and pre-occupied as to be quite lost to outside impressions, when Guy suddenly swerved and reared, with a violence that would have unseated a less practised rider. Monica was not in the least alarmed, but the movement aroused her from her reverie, and she was quickly made aware of what had frightened the horse.

A tall, broad-shouldered young man stepped forward, and laid a hand upon Guy’s bridle, lifting his hat at the same time, and disclosing a broad brow, with a sweeping wave of dark hair lying across it.

“I beg a thousand pardons; I believe I frightened your horse. He is evidently unused to the sight of trespassers. I trust you have not been alarmed.”

Monica smiled at the notion; her face had been somewhat set and cold till the apology had been made. The stranger had no right to be there, certainly, but his frank admission of the fact went far to palliate the crime. She allowed herself to smile, and the smile was in itself a revelation.

“It does not matter,” she said quietly. “I know the wood is perplexing; but if you keep bearing to the west you will find the road before long. No, I was not frightened, thank you. Good afternoon.”

She bent her head slightly, and the stranger uncovered again. He was smiling now, and she could not deny that he was very good-looking, and every inch the gentleman.

She had not an idea who he was nor what he could be doing there; but it was no business of hers. He was probably some tourist who had lost his way exploring the beauties of the coast. She was just a little puzzled by the look his face had worn as he turned away: there was a sort of subdued amusement in the dark blue eyes, and his long brown moustache had quivered as if with the effort to subdue a smile. Yet there had been nothing in the least impertinent in his manner; on the contrary, he had been particularly courtly and polished in his bearing. Monica dismissed the subject from her mind, and rode home as the sun dipped beneath the far horizon.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

LORD TREVLYN’S HEIR

Lord Trevlyn sat in his study in the slowly waning daylight, waiting the arrival of his expected guest. Now that the moment had come, he shrank from the meeting a good deal more than he had once believed he should do. It was so long since he had seen a strange face, and his relations with this unknown heir would perhaps be difficult: undoubtedly the situation was somewhat strained. Would the young man think a trap was being set for him in the person of the beautiful Monica? Was he acting a wise or fatherly part in scheming to give her to this stranger, if it should be possible to do so?

He had liked the tone of Randolph Trevlyn’s courteously-worded acceptance of his invitation. He had liked all that he heard of the man himself. He had a sort of presentiment that his wish would in time be realised, that this visit would not be fruitless; but his child’s happiness: would that be secured in securing to her the possession of a well-loved home?

Randolph Trevlyn would hardly be likely to spend any great part of his life at this lonely sea-bound castle. He might pass a few months there, perhaps; but where would the bulk of his time be spent?

Lord Trevlyn tried to picture his beautiful, wayward, freedom-loving daughter mixing in the giddy whirl of London life, learning its ways and following its fashions, and he utterly failed to do so. She seemed indissolubly connected with the wild sea-coast, with the gloomy pine-woods, with the rugged independence of her sea-girt home. Monica a fashionable young countess, leading a gay life of social distraction! The thing seemed impossible.

But he had no time to indulge his imaginings farther. The door opened, and his guest was ushered in. The old earl rose and bade him welcome with his customary simple, stately courtesy. It was growing somewhat dark in that oak-panelled room, and for a minute or two he hardly distinguished the features of the stranger, but the voice and the words in which the young man answered his greeting pleased his fastidious taste, and a haunting dread of which he had scarcely been fully aware faded from his mind at once and for ever in the first moment of introduction.

Lord Trevlyn heaved an unconscious sigh of relief when he resumed his seat, and was able to give a closer scrutiny to his guest. One glance at his face, figure, and dress, together with the pleasant sound of his voice, convinced Lord Trevlyn that this young man was a gentleman in the rather restricted sense in which he employed that elastic term.

He was a handsome, broad-shouldered, powerful man, with a fine figure, dark hair and moustache, dark blue eyes, frank and well-opened, a quiet, commanding air and carriage, and that cast of countenance which plainly showed that the blood of the Trevlyns ran in his veins.

Lord Trevlyn eyed him with quiet satisfaction, and from the conversation that ensued he had no reason to rescind his favourable impression. Randolph Trevlyn was evidently a man of culture and refinement, with a mental capacity distinctly above the average. He was, moreover, emphatically a man of the world in its truest and widest sense – a man who has lived in the world, and studied it closely, learning thereby from its silent teaching the good and the evil thereof.

The two men talked for a time of the family to which they belonged, and the deaths that had lately taken place, bringing this young man so near to the title.

“The Trevlyns seem to be a dying race,” said the old earl, half sadly. “Our family is slowly dying out. I suppose it has done its work in the world, and is not needed any longer in these stirring times. You and my daughter are now the sole representatives of the Trevlyns in your generation, as my sister and I are in ours.”

Randolph Trevlyn looked into his kinsman’s face with a great deal of reverence and admiration. He liked to meet a man who was a genuine specimen of the “old school.” He felt a natural reverence for the head of his house, and his liking showed itself in voice and manner. Lord Trevlyn saw this, and was gratified, whilst the younger man was pleased to feel himself in accord with his host. The interview ended with mutual satisfaction on both sides, and Randolph was taken up the great oak staircase, down one or two dim, ghostly corridors, and landed finally in a couple of large panelled rooms, most antiquely and quaintly furnished, in both of which, however, great fires of pine logs were blazing cheerily.

“We dine at eight,” Lord Trevlyn had said, in parting with his guest. “I shall hope then to have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister and my daughter.”

Left alone in his comfortable but rather grim-looking quarters, Randolph broke into a low laugh.

“And so this sombre old place, full of ghosts and phantoms of departed days – this enchanted castle between sea and forest – is the home of the lovely girl I saw yesterday! Incongruous, and yet so entirely appropriate! She wants a setting of her own, different from anything else. It must have been Lady Monica I encountered, the lady of the pine-wood. What a sad, proud, lovely face it was, with its frame of golden hair, and soft eyes like a deer’s; and her voice was as sweet as her face, low, and rich, and full of music. What has been the secret of her life? Some sorrow, I am certain, has overshadowed it. Who will be the happy man to bring the sunshine back to that lovely troubled face? Randolph Trevlyn, do not run on so fast. You are no longer a boy. You must not judge by first impressions; you will know more of her soon.”

Randolph’s encounter with Monica the previous day had been purely accidental. The young man had reached St. Maws one day earlier than he had expected, one day earlier than he had been invited to arrive at the Castle. Some business in Plymouth which he had expected would detain him some days had been despatched with greater speed than he had anticipated, and he had gone on to St. Maws to renew acquaintance with his old friend Pendrill, who lived, as he remembered, in that place.

When he descended to the drawing room it was to find the earl and Lady Diana there before him, and he made as favourable an impression upon the vivacious old lady as he had done before upon her brother. Yet he found his attention straying sometimes from the animated talk of his companion, and his eyes would wander to the door by which Monica must enter.

She came at last, stately, beautiful, statuesque, her dress an antique cream-coloured brocade, that had, without doubt, belonged to some remote ancestress; her golden hair coiled like a crown upon her graceful head. She had that same indescribable air of isolation and remoteness that had struck him so much when he had seen her riding in the wood. She did not lift her eyes when her father presented the stranger to her, but only bent her head very slightly, and sat down by herself, somewhat apart.

But when dinner was announced, and Randolph gave her his arm to lead her in, she raised her eyes, and their glances met. He saw that she recognised him, and yet she gave not the slightest sign of having done so, and her face settled into lines of even more severe gravity than before. He felt that she was annoyed at his having met and addressed her previously, and that she would brook no allusion to the encounter.

His talk with the Pendrills had prepared him somewhat for Monica’s coldness towards himself. It was natural enough, he thought, and perhaps a little interesting, especially as he meant to set himself to win her good-will at last.

He did not make much way during dinner. Monica was very silent, and Lady Diana engrossed almost all his attention; but he was content to bide his time, conscious of the charm of her presence, and of the haunting, pathetic character of her beauty, and deeply touched by the story of her devotion to the crippled, suffering Arthur, which was told him by the earl when they were alone together, with more of detail than he had heard it before.

When he returned to the drawing-room, he went straight up to Monica, and said:

“I am going to ask a favour of you, Lady Monica. I want to know if you will be good enough to introduce me to your brother?”

Her face softened slightly as she raised her eyes to his. It was a happy instinct that had led Randolph to call Arthur by the name she most loved to hear, “your brother.”

“You would like to see him to-night?”

“If it is not too late to intrude upon an invalid, I should very much.”

“I think he would be pleased,” said Monica. “It is so seldom he has any one to talk to.”

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