Evelyn Everett-Green - Monica, Volume 1 (of 3)

“Good-bye, Monica. I will look in again to-morrow: but I assure you there is no cause for anxiety. He is not worse than usual, and will be better soon.”

The doctor was buttoning up his heavy driving-coat as he spoke, and at the conclusion of the sentence he opened the heavy oak door, letting in a blast of cold air and a sheet of fine, penetrating rain.

“Oh, Raymond, what weather! I ought not to have sent for you.”

“Nonsense! You know I am weather-proof. Old Jack will find his way home, if I cannot. Good-bye again.”

The door closed upon the stalwart figure, and Lady Monica Trevlyn was left standing alone upon the wide staircase, amid the gathering shadows of the great hall.

Castle Trevlyn was, in truth, a sufficiently grim and desolate place, both within and without. Tangled park, dense pine woods, and a rocky iron-bound coast surrounded it, cutting it off, at it were, from communication with the outside world. Within its walls lay a succession of vast, stately chambers, few of them now inhabited – regions where carved black oak, faded tapestry, rusty armour, and antique relics of bygone days seemed to reign in a sort of mournful grandeur, telling their own tale of past magnificence and of present poverty and decay.

Yes, the Trevlyns were a fallen race; for the past three generations the reigning earl had been poor, and the present Lord Trevlyn had failed to do anything towards restoring the decaying fortunes of his house. He too was very poor, hence the air of neglect that reigned around and within the castle.

Monica, however, his only child, was far too well used to the gloom and grimness of the old castle to be in the least oppressed by it. She loved her lonely, desolate home with a curious, passionate intensity, and could not picture anything more perfect than the utter silence and isolation that hemmed in her life. The idea of desiring a change had never so much as occurred to her.

Monica was very beautiful, with a beauty of a rare kind, that haunted the memory of those who saw her, as a strain of music sometimes haunts the ear. Her face was always pale and grave, and at first sight cold even to hardness, yet endued with an underlying depth and sweetness that often eluded observation, though it never failed to make itself felt. It was a lovely face – like that of a pictured saint for purity of outline, of a Greek statue for perfection of feature – almost as calm and colourless as marble itself. Yet, behind the statuesque severity lay that strange, sad, wistful sweetness which could not quite be hidden away, and gave to the beholder the idea that some great trouble had overshadowed the girl’s life. Let us go with her, and see what that trouble was.

When the door closed upon Raymond Pendrill, she stood for a moment or two silent and motionless, then turned and mounted the shallow stairs once more, and, passing down a long corridor, opened the door of a fire-lit room, and entered softly.

The room had two tenants: one, a great mastiff dog, who acknowledged Monica’s entrance by gently flopping his tail against the floor; the other, a lad of seventeen, who lay upon an invalid couch, his face very white and his brows drawn with pain.

As Monica looked at him her face quivered, and a look of unspeakable tenderness swept over it, transfiguring it for the moment, and showing wonderful possibilities in every line and curve. She bent over him, laying one cool, strong hand upon his hot head.

“Better, Arthur?”

“Yes, getting better. That stuff Raymond gave me is taking the pain away. Stir up the fire, and sit where I can see you. I like that best.”

Arthur Pendrill, cousin to Raymond Pendrill, the young doctor who had just left the castle, was the only child by a first marriage of Lord Trevlyn’s second wife. Hoping for an heir, the earl had married again when Monica was seven years old, but his hopes had not been realised, and the second Lady Trevlyn had died only a few years after her union with him.

Arthur, who had been only a mite of two years old when he first came to Castle Trevlyn, knew nothing, of course, of any other home; and he and Monica had grown up like brother and sister, and were tenderly attached, perhaps all the more so from radical differences of character and temperament. Their childhood had been uncloudedly happy; they had enjoyed a glorious liberty in their wild Cornish home that could hardly have been accorded to them anywhere else. Monica’s had always been the leading spirit; physically as well as mentally, she had always been the stronger; but he adored her, and emulated her with the zeal and enthusiasm of youth. He followed her wherever she led like a veritable shadow, until that fatal day, five years ago, which had laid him upon a bed of sickness, and had turned Monica in a few hours’ time from a child to a woman.

Upon that day there had been a terrible end to the mad-cap exploits in cliff-climbing in which the girl had always delighted, and Arthur had been carried back to the castle, as all believed, to die.

He did not die, however, but recovered to a suffering, helpless, invalid life; and Monica, who held herself sternly responsible for all, and who had nursed him with a devotion that no mother could have surpassed, now vowed deep down in her heart that her own life should henceforth be devoted to him, that for him she would in future live, and that whatever she could do to lighten his load of pain and make his future happier should be done, at whatever cost to herself, as the one atonement possible for the rashness which had cost him so dear.

Five years ago that vow had been recorded, and Monica, from a gay, high-spirited girl, had grown into a pale, silent, thoughtful woman; but she had never wearied of her self-imposed charge – never faltered in her resolution. Arthur was her special, sacred charge. Anything that would conduce to his welfare and happiness was to be accomplished at whatever cost. So far, to tend and care for him had been her aim and object of life, and her deep love had made the office sweet. It had never occurred to her that any contingency could possibly arise by which separation from him should prove the truest test of her devotion.

Whilst Arthur and Monica were dreaming their own dreams upstairs, by the light of his dancing fire, no thought of coming changes clouding the horizon of their imagination, downstairs, in the earl’s study, a consultation was being held between him and his sister which would have startled Monica not a little had she heard it.

Lord Trevlyn was a tall, stately, grey-headed man of sixty, with a finely-chiselled face and the true Trevlyn cast of countenance that his daughter had inherited. His countenance wore, however, a look of pallor and ill-health that, to a practised eye, denoted weakness of the heart, and his figure had lost its old strength and elasticity, and had grown thin and a little bowed. His expression had much of gentleness mingling with its pride and austerity, as if, with the advance of years, his nature had softened and sweetened, as indeed had been the case.

Lady Diana, on the other hand, had grown more sharp and dictatorial with advancing age. She was a “modish” old lady, who, although quite innocent of such adornments, always suggested the idea of powder and patches, high-heeled shoes and hoops. She generally carried a fan in her hand, dressed richly and quaintly, and looked something like a human parrot, with her hooked nose, keen black eyes, and quick, sharp voice and movements. She had an independent and sufficient income of her own, and divided her time between her London house and her brother’s Cornish castle. She had always expressed it as her intention to provide for Monica, as her father could do little for his daughter, everything going with the entail in the male line; but there was a sort of instinctive hostility between aunt and niece, of which both were well aware, and Lady Diana was always deeply offended and annoyed by Monica’s quiet independence, and her devotion to Arthur.