Monica, Volume 3 (of 3)

“My wife! Monica! My wife!”

And then for a time she knew no more. Sight and hearing alike failed her; it seemed as if a slumber from heaven itself sealed her eyes and stole away her senses.

When she came to herself she was on a sofa in her own room, and Randolph was kneeling beside her. She did not start to see him there. For a moment it seemed as if he had never left her. She smiled her own sweet smile.

“Randolph! Have I been asleep – dreaming?”

He took her hands in his, and bent to kiss her lips.

“It has been a long dream, my Monica, and a dark one; but it is over at last. My darling, my darling! God grant I may not be dreaming now!”

She smiled like a tired child. She had a perception that something overpoweringly strange and sudden had happened, but she did not want to rouse herself just yet to think what it must all mean.

Two hours later, in the great drawing-room ablaze with light, Monica and Randolph stood together to welcome their guests. She had laid aside her mournful widow’s garb, and was arrayed in her shimmering bridal robes. Ah, how lovely she was in her husband’s eyes as she stood beside him now! Perhaps never in all her life had she looked more exquisitely fair. Happiness had lighted her beautiful eyes, and had brought the rose back to her pale cheeks: she was glorified – transfigured – a vision of radiant beauty.

He had changed but slightly during his mysterious year of absence. There were a few lines upon his face that had not been there of old: he looked like a man who had been through some ordeal, whether mental or physical it would be less easy to tell; but the same joy and rapture that emanated, as it were, from Monica was reflected in his face likewise, and only a keen eye could read to-night the traces of pain or of sorrow in that strong, proud, manly countenance.

Monica looked at him suddenly, the flush deepening in her cheeks.

“Hush! They are coming!” she said, and waited breathlessly.

The door opened, admitting Mrs. Pendrill, Beatrice, and Tom. There was a pause – a brief, intense silence, during which the fall of a pin might have been heard, and then, with one long, low cry, half-sobbing, half-laughing, Beatrice rushed across the room, and flung herself upon Randolph.

Monica went straight up to Mrs. Pendrill, and put her arms about her neck.

“Aunt Elizabeth, he has come home,” she said, in a voice that shook a little with the tumult of her happiness. “He has just come home – this very day – Randolph – my husband. Help me to believe it. You must help me to bear this – as you helped me to bear the other.”

Tom had by this time grasped Randolph by the hand; but neither trusted his own voice. They were glad that Beatrice covered their silence by her incoherent exclamations of rapture, and by the flow of questions no one attempted to answer.

It was all too like a dream for anyone to recollect very clearly what happened. Raymond and Haddon came in almost at once, new greetings had to be gone through. How the dinner passed off that night no one afterwards remembered. There was a deep sense of thankfulness and joy in every heart; yet of words there were few. But when gathered round the fire later on in the evening, when they had grown used to the presence amongst them of one whom they had mourned as dead for more than a year, Randolph was called upon to tell his tale, which was listened to in breathless silence.

“I will tell you all I can about it; but there are points yet where my memory fails me, where I have but little idea what happened. I have a dim recollection of the night of the wreck, and of leaving the boat; but I must have received a heavy blow on the head, the doctors tell me, and I suppose I sank, and the men could not find me. But I was entangled, it seems, in the rigging of a floating spar, and must have been carried thus many miles; for I was picked up by an ocean steamer bound for Australia, which had been driven somewhat out of its course by the gale. It was not supposed that I could live after so many hours’ exposure. I was quite unconscious, and remained so for a very long time. There was nothing upon me by which I could be identified, and of course I could give no account of myself. On board the boat were a kind-hearted wealthy Australian couple, who had lately lost an only son, to whom they fancied I bore some slight resemblance. Perhaps for this cause, perhaps from true kindness of heart, they at once took me under their special care and protection. There was plenty of space on board the vessel, and they looked after me as if I had indeed been their son. They would not hear of my being left behind in hospital on the way out. They took me under their protection until I should be able to give an account of myself.

“Of course I knew nothing about all this. I was lying dangerously ill of brain fever all the while, not knowing where I was, or what was happening. When we reached Melbourne at last, and I was conveyed to their luxurious house on the outskirts of the town, I was still in the same state, relapse following relapse, every time till I gained a little ground, till for months my life was despaired of. I was either raving in delirium, or lying in a sort of unconscious stupor, and without all the skill and care lavished upon me, I suppose I must have died. But I did not die. Gradually, very gradually, the fever abated, and I began to come to myself: that is to say, I began to know the faces around me and to recognise my surroundings; but for myself, I knew no more who I was, nor whence I had come, than the infant just born into the world. My memory had gone, had been wiped clean away; I had no idea of my own identity, no recollection of the past. The very effort to remember brought on such pain and distress that I was imperatively commanded to relinquish the attempt. Gradually some things came back to my mind: I could read, write, understand the foreign tongues I had mastered, and the sciences I had studied in past days. As my health slowly improved this kind of knowledge came back spontaneously and without effort; but my personal history was as a blank wall, against which I flung myself in vain. It would yield to no efforts of mine. Distressed and confused, I was obliged to give up, and wait with what patience I might for the realisation of the hope held out cheerfully by the clever doctor who attended me. He maintained that if I would but have patience, some strong association of ideas would some day bring all back in a flash, and meantime all I had to do was to get strong and well, so as to be ready for action when that day should come. I was restless sometimes, but less so than one would fancy, for the blank was too complete to be distressing. My good friends and protectors were unspeakably kind and good, and did everything in their power to ensure my mental and physical well-being; I recovered my health rapidly, soon my memory was to come back too.”

Randolph passed his hand across his eyes. No one spoke, every eye was fixed upon his face.

“It did so very strangely: it was one hot afternoon in November – our summer, you know” – he named the date and the hour, and Monica heard it with a sudden thrill. Allowing for the discrepancy of time, it was during the moments that she watched by Conrad Fitzgerald’s dying bed that her husband’s memory was given back to him.

“I was looking over some old English newspapers, idly, purposelessly, when I came upon a detailed account of the wreck, and of my own supposed death. As I read – I cannot describe what it was like – my memory came back to me in a great flood, like overwhelming waves. It seemed, Monica, as if my spirit were carried on wings to Trevlyn, as if I were hovering over you in some mysterious way impossible to describe. I called your name aloud. I knew that I was close to you, at Trevlyn – it is useless to attempt to define what I felt. When I came to myself they told me I had fainted; but that was not so. I had been on a journey, that is all, and had returned. My memory was restored from that hour, clearly and distinctly; the doctor thought there might be lapses, that I might never be the same man again as I had been once; but I have felt no ill effects since. Little more remains to be told. My first instinct was to telegraph; but not knowing what had happened in my absence, knowing I must long have been given up for lost, I was afraid to do so, lest hopeless confusion should result. Instead, I took the first home-bound steamer, and reached London late last night. I found out at the house there where Monica was, and came on here by the first train. I have come back home to spend my Christmas with you.”