Tom walked with him to church for the afternoon service. He spoke of Monica with great frankness.

“I have always likened her to a sort of Undine,” he remarked, “though not in the generally accepted sense. There are latent capacities within her that might make her a very remarkable woman; but half her nature is sleeping still. According to the tradition, love must awake the slumbering soul. I often think it is that which wanted to transform and humanise my Lady Monica.”

Randolph was silent. The smallest suspicion of criticism of Monica jarred [94]upon him. Tom saw this, and smiled to himself.

[94]

They reached the little cliff church long before the rustic congregation had begun to assemble. The sound of the organ was audible from within.

Tom laid his fingers on his lips and made a sign to his companion to follow him. They softly mounted a little quaint stairway towards the organ loft, and reached a spot where, hidden themselves by the dark shadows, they could watch the player as she sat before the instrument.

Monica had taken off her heavily-plumed hat, and the golden sunshine glowed about her fair head in a sort of mist of liquid brightness. Her face wore a dreamy, softened look, pathetically sad and sweet. Her lustrous dark eyes were full of feeling. [95]It seemed as if she were breathing out her soul in the sweet, low strains of music that sounded in the air.

[95]

Randolph gazed for one long minute, and then silently withdrew; it seemed a kind of sacrilege to take her unawares like that, when she was unconscious of their presence.

“Saint Cecilia!” he murmured softly, as he descended the stairs once again. “Monica, my Monica! will you ever be mine in reality? Will you ever learn to love me?”

Monica’s face still wore its softened dreamy look as she joined Randolph at the close of the service. Music exercised a strange power over her, raising her for a time above the level of the region in which she moved at other times. She [96]looked pale and a little tired, as if the strain of the week of anxiety about Arthur had not yet quite passed off. As they reached the top of the down and turned the angle of the cliff, the wind, which had been gradually rising all day and now blew half a gale, struck them with all its force, and Monica staggered a little beneath its sudden fury.

 Prev. P 33/76 next