Mrs. Pendrill, too, was a good deal at Trevlyn. She yearned over Monica in the days of her early widowhood, and she had grown very fond of Beatrice and her brother. Haddon wanted so very much care and nursing that Mrs. Pendrill’s presence in the house was often a help to all. Whilst Monica was in the sick room, she and Beatrice spent many long hours together, and strange intimacy of thought sprang up between those two who were so far from each other in age and position. Haddon, too, was fond of the gentle-faced old lady, and he loved sometimes to get her all to herself, and make her talk to him of Monica.
His illness had left its traces upon the earl. He had, despite his five-and-twenty years, seemed but a lad all this while; but when he left his bed, it was curious to see how much of boyishness had passed out of his face, how much quiet, thoughtful manliness had taken its place.
Nobody quite knew how or why this change had been so marked. Perhaps the shock of his friend’s death had had something to do with it: perhaps the danger he had himself been in. Very near indeed to the gates of death had the young man stood. He had almost trodden the shadowy valley, even though his steps had been retraced to the land of the living. Perhaps it was this knowledge that made him pass as it were in one bound from boyhood to manhood – or was there some other cause at work?
His face wore a look of curious purpose and resolution, oddly combined with a sort of mute, determined patience: his pale, sharpened face, that had changed so much during the past weeks, was changed in expression even more than in contour. His grey eyes, once always full of boyish merriment and laughter, were grave and earnest now: the eyes of a man full of thought, expressive of a hidden yet resolute purpose. These hollow eyes followed Monica about with unconscious persistency, and rested upon her with a sense of perfect content. When he grew a little stronger, and could just rise from the sofa and trail himself across the room, it was strange to mark how eager he was to render her those little instinctive attentions that come naturally from a man to a woman.
Sometimes Monica would accept them with a smile, oftener she would restrain him with a gentle commanding gesture, and bid him keep quiet till he was stronger; but she accepted his chivalrous admiration in the spirit in which it was offered, and let him look upon himself as her especial knight, as well he might, since to her skill and care Tom plainly told him he owed his life.
She let him talk to her of Randolph, though none of the others dared to breathe that name. Sometimes she played to him in the dimness of the music-room – and even he hardly knew how privileged he was to be admitted there. She regarded him in the light of a loved brother, and felt tenderly towards him, as one who had done and suffered much in the same cause that had cost her gallant husband his life. What he felt towards her would be more difficult to analyse. At present he simply worshipped her, with a humble, devout singleness of purpose that elevated his whole nature. The vague, fleeting, distant hope that some day it might be given to him to comfort her had hardly yet entered into the region of conscious thought.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH
HAUNTED
Christmas had come and gone whilst Lord Haddon lay hovering between life and death. As the year turned, he began to regain health and strength; but his progress was exceedingly slow, and all idea of leaving Trevlyn was for the present entirely out of the question. A journey in mid-winter was not to be thought of. It would be enough to bring the whole illness back again; and Monica would not listen when he sometimes said, with diffidence and appeal, that he feared they were encroaching too much upon her hospitality and goodness. In truth, neither brother nor sister were in haste to leave Trevlyn, or to leave Monica alone in her desolate widowhood; and as Haddon’s state of health rendered a move out of the question, the situation was accepted with the more readiness.
Monica was able now to resume something of the even tenor of her way, to take up her daily round of duties, and shape out her life in accordance with her strangely altered circumstances.
All the old sense of dread connected with the sea had now vanished entirely. It never frowned upon her now. It was her friend always – the haunting presentiment of dread had passed away with the actual certainty. Henceforward nothing could hold for her any great measure of terror. She had passed through the very worst already.
Sometimes Monica had a strange feeling that she was not alone during her favourite twilight pacings by the sea. She had a sense of being watched – followed – and the uneasiness of the dogs added to this impression. It troubled her but little, however. She had no fears for herself – she knew, too, that she was a little fanciful, and that it was hardly likely in reality that her footsteps were dogged.
But one dim January evening, as she pursued her way along the margin of the sea, she was startled by seeing some large object lying dark upon the pebbly beach. Her heart beat more fast than was its wont, for she saw as she approached that it was the figure of a man, lying face downwards upon the damp stones.
He did not look like a fisherman, he was too well dressed, and there seemed something not altogether unfamiliar in the aspect of the slight, well-proportioned figure. For a moment she could not recall the association, but as the dogs ran up snuffing and growling, the man started and sat up, revealing the pale, haggard face of Conrad Fitzgerald.
Monica recoiled with an instinctive gesture of aversion. She had not seen him since those summer days when she had been haunted by the vision of his vindictive face and sinister eyes. But how he had changed since then! She could not help looking at him, he was so pale, so thin; his face was lined as if by pain, and his fiery eyes were set in deep hollows. There was something rather awful in his appearance, yet he did not look so wicked, so repulsive, as he had done many times before.
A strange look of terror gleamed in his eyes as they met those of Monica.
“Go away!” he cried wildly. “What do you come here for? Why do you look at me like that? Go – in mercy, go!”
Monica was startled at his wild words and looks. Surely he was mad. But if so, she must show no fear of him; she knew enough to be aware of that.
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she said. “You ought not to be lying there this cold night. You had better go home, or you will lose your way in the dark.”
He laughed wildly.
“Lose my way in the dark! It is always dark now – always, since that dark night – ha! ha! – that night!” His laugh was terrible in its wild despair. “Why do you look at me? Why do you speak to me? You should not! You should not! You would not if – oh, God! are you a ghost too?”
Such an awful look of horror shone out of his eyes that Monica’s blood ran cold. His gaze was fixed on vacancy. He looked straight at her, yet as if he did not see her, but something beyond. The anguish and despair painted upon that wild, yet still beautiful, face smote Monica’s heart with a sense of deep sorrow and pity.
“I am no ghost, Conrad,” she answered gently, trying if the sound of the old name would drive that wild madness out of his eyes. “Why are you afraid? What are you looking at? There is nothing there.”
For his eyes were still glaring wildly into the darkness beyond, and as Monica spoke he lifted his arm, and pointed to something out at sea.
“Don’t look at me!” he whispered hoarsely, yet not as if he addressed Monica. “Don’t speak to me! If you speak, I shall go mad! I shall go mad, I say! Why do you haunt me so? Why do you look always like that? I had a right – all is fair in love and war – and hate! Why did you give me the chance? I had a vow – a vow in heaven – or hell! Ah! ha! Revenge is sweet, after all!” and he burst into a wild, discordant laugh, dreadful to hear.
Monica shuddered, a sense of horror creeping over her. She did not catch the whole of his words, lost as that hoarse whisper was sometimes in the sullen plash of the advancing waves. The words were not addressed to her, but to some imaginary object visible only to the eye of madness. She attached no meaning to what she heard. She had no clue by which to unravel the workings of his disordered mind. Yet it was terrible to see his terror-stricken face, and listen to the exclamations addressed to a phantom foe. She tried to recall him to himself.
“Conrad, there is no one here but ourselves. You have been dreaming.”
Conrad turned his wild eyes towards her, but continued to point wildly over the sea.
“Can you not see him? There – out there! His head – his eyes – ah, those eyes! – as he looked then– then! Ah, don’t look so at me, I say! You will kill me!”
He buried his face in his hands and shuddered from head to foot. Monica, despite the shiver of horror that crept over her, felt more strongly than anything else a deep pity for one whose mind was so visibly shattered. Much of the past could be condoned to one whose mental faculties were so terribly unstrung. She came one step nearer, and laid her hand upon his arm.
“You should not be out here alone,” she said. “You had better go home. It is growing dark already. If you will come with me to the lodge, I will see that you have a lantern; or, if you like, I will send a servant with a lantern with you.” She felt, indeed, that he was hardly in a condition to be out alone. She wished Tom Pendrill could see him now. But at the touch of her hand Conrad sprang back as if she had struck him. His eyes were full of shrinking horror.
“Go away!” he said fiercely, “your hand burns me – it burns me, I say! How can you look at me or touch me? What have I done that you come here day by day to torment me? Is it not enough that he leaves me no peace night or day? – that he brings me down to this cursed place, whether I will or no, but you must haunt me too? Ah, it is too much – it is too much, I say!”
She could not catch all these rapidly-uttered words, but she read the hopeless misery of his face.
“I do not wish to distress you, Conrad. Will you go home quietly now? You are not well; you should not be out here alone. Have you anybody there to take care of you?”
He laughed again, and flung his arms above his head with a wild gesture of despair.
“You say this to me – you! you! It only wanted this. My God, this is too much!”
He turned from her and sprang away in the darkness. She heard his steps as he dashed recklessly up the cliff path – so recklessly that she half expected to hear the sound of a slip and a fall – and then as he reached the summit and turned inland, they died away into silence.
Monica drew a long breath of relief when she found herself alone. There was something expressibly awful in talking alone to a madman in the dimness of the dying day, in hearing his wild words addressed to some phantom shadow seen only by his disordered vision. She shivered a little as she turned towards him. She could stay no longer in that lonely place.
She met Tom looking out for her on her return. He said something about her staying out too long in the darkness. She laid her hand upon his arm, and pacing up and down the dark avenue, she told him of her adventure with the madman.
“Tom, I am certain he ought to see a doctor. Will you not see if you can do something for him?”
She could not see the expression of Tom’s face. Had she been able to do so, she would have been startled. His voice was very cold as he answered:
“I am not a lunacy commissioner, Monica.”
She was surprised, and a little hurt.
“You are very hard, Tom. You saw him once before, why not again?”
“If he, or his friends for him, require medical advice, I suppose they are capable of sending for it,” he said, adding with sudden fierceness, as it seemed to her, “Monica, Conrad Fitzgerald, ill or well, is nothing to you. It is not fit you should waste a single thought upon that scoundrel again!”
She was surprised at his vehemence; it was so unlike Tom to speak with heat. What had there been in her account of the meeting to discompose him so greatly? Before she could attempt to frame the question, he had asked one of her – asked it abruptly, as it seemed irrelevantly.
“How long has Fitzgerald been in these parts?”
“I don’t know? I have never seen him till to-night, nor heard of him at all?”
“Nor I. Go in, Monica. It is too late for you to be out.”
“And you?”
“I will come presently.”
“And you will think about what I asked you?”
“I will think about it – yes.”
The tone was enigmatic. She could not make Tom out at all, but she went in at his bidding. She knew that he wished to be alone, that he had something disturbing upon his mind, though what it was she could not divine.
Tom, as it turned out, had no choice in the matter; for his brother sent to him next day a message to the effect that Fitzgerald’s servant had been to him with a very sad account of his master, who seemed to be suffering under an acute attack of delirium tremens. Raymond thought his brother, who had seen him once before, had better go the next day in a casual sort of way, and see if he could do anything. Fitzgerald was furious at the idea of having a doctor near him; but possibly he would not regard Tom in that light, and the servants would do all they could to obtain for him access to their master. They were terrified at his ravings, and half afraid he would do himself or them an injury if not placed under proper control.
So Tom, upon the following afternoon, started for the old dilapidated house, without saying a word to anyone as to his destination, and was eagerly admitted by a haggard-looking servant, who said that his master was “terrible bad to-day – it was awful like to hear him go on,” and expressed it as his opinion that he was almost past knowing who was near him, he was so wild and delirious. He had kept his bed for the past two days, having been very ill since coming in, wet and exhausted, on the night Monica had seen him. Between the attacks of delirium he was as weak as a child; and with this much of warning and explanation, Tom was ushered upstairs.
An hour later he left that desolate house with a quick, firm tread, that broke, as he turned a corner and was concealed from view, almost to a run. His face was very pale; it looked thinner and sharper than it had done an hour before, and his eyes were full of an unspeakable horror. Now and again a sort of shudder ran through his frame; but no word passed his tightly-compressed lips. He hurried through the tangled park as if some deadly malaria lurked there. He hardly drew his breath until he had left the trees and brake behind, and had plunged into the wild trackless moor; even then, goaded by his thoughts, he plunged blindly along for a mile or more, until at last, breathless and exhausted, he sank face downwards upon the heather, trembling in every limb.
How long he lay there he never knew. He was roused at last by a touch upon his shoulder, and raising himself with a start, he looked straight into the startled eyes of Beatrice Wentworth.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.
LOVERS
Tom sprang to his feet, and the two stood gazing at one another for a moment in mute surprise.
“You are ill,” said Beatrice; “you are as white as a sheet. What is the matter?”
She spoke anxiously. She looked half frightened at his strange looks; he saw it, and recovered himself instantly. It was perhaps the first time he had ever been taken unawares, and he was not altogether pleased that it had happened now.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” he asked peremptorily.
“What are you doing lying on the ground on a cold January evening?” she retorted. “Do you want to get rheumatic fever, too?”
“Answer my question first. What are you doing out here, miles away from home, with the darkness coming on, too?”
“I lost my way,” she answered carelessly. “I never can keep my bearings in these strange, wild places, where everything looks alike.”
“Then I must take you home,” said Tom shortly.
“You said you were going to dine at St. Maws to-night,” she objected.
“I shall take you home first,” he said.
“It will be ever so much out of your road. Just show me the way. I shall find it fast enough.”
“I dare say – After having lost it in broad daylight. You must come with me. I cannot trust you.”
Beatrice flushed hotly as she turned and walked beside him. Was more meant than met the ear?
“There is not the least need you should,” she said haughtily, and seemed disposed to say no more.
Tom spoke first, spoke in his abrupt peremptory fashion. He was absorbed and distrait. She tried not to feel disappointed at his words.
“Lady Beatrice, is it true that you knew Randolph Trevlyn intimately for many years?”
“Ever since I can remember. He was almost like a brother to us.”
“Do you know if he ever had an enemy?”
Beatrice looked up quickly into his pale face.
“Why do you ask?”
“That is my affair. I do not ask without a reason. Think before you answer – if you can.”
“Randolph was always such a favourite,” she began, but was interrupted by a quick impatient gesture from Tom.
“Don’t chatter,” he said, almost rudely, “think!”
Oddly enough this brusque reminder did not offend her. She saw that Tom’s nerves were all on edge, that they were strung to a painful pitch of tension. She began to catch some of his earnestness and determination.
Beatrice was taken out of herself, and from that moment her manner changed for the better. She thought the matter over in silence.
“I have heard that Sir Conrad Fitzgerald had an old grudge against him.”
“Ah!” breathed Tom softly.
“But I fancied, perhaps, that Monica’s influence had made them friends. Randolph knew some disreputable story connected with Sir Conrad’s past life – Haddon knows more about it than I do – and he always hated him for it.”
“Ah!” said Tom again.
“Why do you ask?” questioned Beatrice again; but he gave her no answer. He was wrapped in deep thought. She looked at him once or twice, but said no more. He was the first to speak, and the question was a little significant.
“You were down on the shore with Monica and Trevlyn that night, were you not?”
“Yes.”
“Was Fitzgerald there, too?”
She looked at him with startled eyes.
“No; certainly not.”
“Can you be sure of that? Was there moon enough to show plainly everything that went on?”
Beatrice put up her hand to her head.
“No,” she answered. “I ought not to have spoken so positively. It was too dark to see anything. There might have been dozens of people there whom I might never have seen. I was much too anxious and excited to keep a sharp look-out – why should I? – and there was not a gleam of moonlight till many minutes after the boat got back, and the confusion was very great all the time. Why do you talk so? Why do you ask such a question?”
She spoke with subdued excitement and insistance.
“Somebody was in that boat unknown to the crew,” he answered significantly.
“Was there?”
“Somebody steered the boat to shore. You do not share, I presume, in the popular belief of the phantom coxswain?”
Beatrice stopped short, trembling and scared.
“You think – ?” but she could only get out those two words; she knew not how to frame the question.
He bent his head. “I do.”
But she put out her hand with a quick, passionate gesture, as if fighting with some hideous phantom.
“Ah! no! no! It could not be. It would be too unspeakably awful – too horrible! How do you know? How can you say such things? What has put such a hideous thought into your mind?”
“I came from standing by Fitzgerald’s bed, listening to his words of wandering, his delirious outbursts. It is plain enough what phantoms are haunting him now – what pictures he is seeing, as he lies in the stupor of drink and opium. He is trying to drown thought and remorse, but he has not succeeded yet.”
Beatrice shuddered strongly, and faltered a little in her walk. Tom took her hand and placed it within his arm.
“You are tired, Beatrice?”
“No; but it is so awful. Tom” – calling him so as unconsciously as he had called her Beatrice – “must Monica know this? Oh! it was cruel enough before – but this – ”
“She shall never know,” said Tom quickly. “To what end should we add this burden to what she carries now? No one could prove it – it may be nothing more than some sick fancy, engendered by the thought of what might have been. Mind you, I have no moral doubts myself; but the man is practically mad, and no confession or evidence given by him would be accepted. He has fulfilled his vow – he has murdered – practically murdered his foe; but Monica must be spared the knowledge: she must never know.”
“No, never! never!” cried Beatrice; and her voice expressed so much feeling, that Tom turned and looked at her in the fading light.
“Have you a heart after all, Beatrice?” he asked.
She made no answer; her heart beat wildly, answering in its own fashion the question asked, but not in a way that he could hear.
“Beatrice,” rather fiercely, “why did you not marry the marquis?”
“Because I loathed him.”
“You did not always loathe him?”
“I did, I did, always.”
“You flirted with him disgracefully, then.”
She looked up with something of pleading in her dark eyes.
“I was but eighteen.”
“Do you never flirt now?”
She looked up again, her eyes flashing strangely.
“What right have you to ask such a question?”
“The right of the man who loves you,” he answered, in the same half-fierce, half-bitter way – “who loves you with every fibre of his being; and although he has proved you vain and frivolous and heartless once and again, cannot tear your image from his heart. Do not think I am complaining. I suppose you have a right to please yourself; but sometimes I feel as if no man had ever been treated so abominably as I have been by you.”
“You by me!” she answered, panting in her excitement, “when it was you who left me in a fury, without one word of farewell.”
“I thought I had had my congé pretty distinctly.”
“You had had nothing of the kind – nothing but a few wild confused words from a mere child, frightened and bewildered by happiness and nervousness into the silliest of speeches a silly girl could make at such a moment. But you cannot understand – you never will – you are made of stone, I think.”
He turned upon her quickly.
“I wish I were, sometimes,” he said; “I wish it when I am near you. You make me love you – I am powerless in your hands, and you – you – ”
“I love you with all my heart. I have never loved anybody else, and you have behaved cruelly, disgracefully to me always.” The words came all at once in one vehement burst of passion.
He stopped short, wheeled round, and stood facing her. He could only just see her face as they stood thus in the gathering dusk.
“Beatrice,” he said, slowly, “what did you say just now? Say it again.”
Defiance shone out of her eyes.
“I will not!” she said, her cheeks flaming.
He took both her hands in his and held them hard.
“Yes you will,” he answered. “Say it again.”
She was panting with a strange mixture of feeling; the earth and sky seemed to spin round together.
“Say it again, Beatrice.”
“I said – I loved you; but I don’t – I will never, never say it again – ”
She got no farther, for he held her so closely in his arms that all speech was impossible for the moment.
“That will do,” he answered. “I don’t want you to say it again. Once is enough.”
“Monica,” said Beatrice in the softest of whispers as she came into the quiet room where her brother lay asleep upon the sofa, and Monica sat dreaming beside the fire. “Ah, Monica, Monica!” and then she stopped short, kneeling down, and turning her quivering face and swimming eyes towards the face bent tenderly over her.
Somehow it was never needful to say much to Monica. She always understood without many words. She bent her head now, and kissed Beatrice.
“Is it so, then, dear?” she asked.
“Did you know?”
“I knew what you told me yourself, and I could see for myself that he had not forgotten any more than you.”
“I did not see it.”
“Possibly not – neither did he; but sometimes love is very blind – and very wilful too.”
Was there a touch of tender reproach in the tone? Beatrice looked at her earnestly.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “We both want to be master; but I think – I am afraid – he will have the upper hand now.”
But the smile that quivered over the upturned face was full of such sweetness and brightness that Monica kissed her again.
“You will not find him such a tyrant as he professes to be. Tom is very generous and unselfish, despite his affectation of cynicism. I am so glad you have made him happy at last. I am so glad that our paths in life will not lie very widely apart.”
Beatrice took Monica’s hand and kissed it.
“I am so happy,” she said simply. “And I owe it all to you.”
Monica caressed the dark head laid against her knee, as Beatrice subsided into her favourite lowly position at Monica’s feet. Presently she became aware that the girl’s tears were falling fast.