The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight
and opened the shutters, he demanded in his sternest tones:
"Who is there?"
"It is I--Alec, your son," came the reply in a well-remembered voice.
Sir Gilbert drew a long breath and paused for a space of half-a-dozen seconds. Then he unhasped and flung wide the window, and John Alexander Clare, the scapegrace heir, rain-soaked and mud-bedraggled, stepped into the room.
His father closed the window after him, while Alec proceeded to relieve himself of his soft broad-brimmed hat and the long cloak which had enveloped him from head to foot.
Like his father, the heir of Withington Chase was tall and slender and as upright as a dart. He had the same aquiline, high-bred cast of features, but in his case there was lacking that expression of hauteur and domineering pride, which to a certain extent marred those of the elder man.
Sir Gilbert's eyes in colour were a cold bluish-grey, and, though not really small, had the appearance of being so owing to their being so deep set under his heavy brows and to his habit of contracting his lids when addressing himself to anyone. Alec's hazel eyes, inherited from his mother, were large, clear, and open as the day. The baronet's lips under his white moustache were thin and hard-set, and his rare smile was that of a cynic and a man who loved to find food for his sardonic humour in the faults and follies of his fellow-creatures. His son's mouth, if betraying a touch of that weakness which as often as not is the result of an overplus of good-nature, was yet an eminently pleasant one, while his smile was frankness itself. His cheeks were a little more sunken than they ought to have been at his age, and there were dark half-circles under his eyes, which seemed to hint at late hours and mornings that bring a headache. His hair, which he wore short and parted in the middle, was in colour a dark reddish-brown, as were also his short pointed beard and small moustache.
"And to what, sir, am I indebted for the honour of a visit at this untimely hour?" inquired Sir Gilbert in his most freezing accents, as his coldly critical eyes took in his son from head to foot.
Alec coloured for a moment and bit his lip, as if to keep down some rising emotion. Then, in a voice of studied calmness, he said, "Perhaps, sir, I may be permitted to take a seat; for, in point of fact, I am dead tired, and have much to say to you."
The baronet waved his son to a chair, and took another himself some distance away.
"I am here to-night, father, to make a confession."
"I presumed as much the moment I set eyes on you."
"I am afraid you will term it a very disgraceful confession."
"I have not much doubt on that point," responded the baronet grimly. "Disgrace and you seem to have gone hand in hand for a long time past."
"Folly, but not disgrace, father. At the worst----"
The baronet held up his hand. "I am not used to such hair-splitting distinctions. You may call it by what term you like, t, my way of thinking, it is nothing less than a disgrace when a young man permits himself to contract debts which he has no reasonable prospect--nay, which, in many cases, he has no intention of liquidating. But proceed, sir."
Apparently Alec found it no easy matter to proceed. The story he had to tell was, without doubt, a sufficiently discreditable one, and such as might well cause him to hesitate before he could summon up sufficient courage to enter on its recital. Put into the fewest possible words it came to this: he had lost heavily over a certain race, and had no means of meeting his liabilities. In three days' time, unless his father would come to his help, he would be posted as a defaulter, which, for a man in his position, meant outlawry and social extinction. He got through his confession somehow, speaking in hard, dry tones, almost as if he were relating an incident which referred to some stranger and in which he had no personal concern. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlocked, and his eyes apparently intent on taking in the pattern of the carpet.
A harsh rasping laugh broke from Sir Gilbert.
"And are you really such an imbecile as to have come all the way to Withington, and on such a night as this, indulging yourself with the hope that I would as much as lift my little finger if by so doing I could avert the disgrace--the infamy--which you have wilfully accumulated on your worthless head? If you laid any such flattering unction to your soul, you can dismiss it at once. There is the window, sir; you can depart by the way you came."
Alec drew himself up, and for the first time looked his father straight in the face with the old clear, unwavering look, which the latter remembered so well in him as a boy.
"You wrong me somewhat, sir," he said, with a bitter smile. "When I ventured to intrude upon you it was without the slightest expectation that, for my sake alone, you would move hand or foot to extricate me from the predicament in which my folly had landed me; but it seemed to me that you might, perhaps, be moved to do so by a consideration of a very different kind."
Sir Gilbert's heavy brows came together.
"I am certainly unaware of any such consideration as the one you speak of. But perhaps you will condescend to enlighten me."
"It has seemed to me, sir, that you might, for the sake of the family good name, do that which you refused to do to save the reputation of your eldest son."
An involuntary "Ah!" escaped the baronet. It was a view of the question which had not struck him before. For a minute or two he sat in frowning silence. Then he said:
"And are yours the lips that dare to put forward a plea for safeguarding that good name which you have so infamously chosen to imperil? Oh, this seems to me the vilest hypocrisy!"
Alec raised his hands with a deprecatory gesture, but did not attempt to vindicate himself by a word. Sir Gilbert rose and crossed to the window by which his son had entered. The shutters had not been replaced, and he stood gazing out into the night for what to Alec seemed a long time. The gale had temporarily abated, torn and jagged masses of cloud were hurrying across the sky as if hastening to some rendezvous, revealing translucent depths of moonlit space between their severed fringes.
"What is the sum of your liability in connection with this last most discreditable affair?" demanded Sir Gilbert, after a time, without turning his head.
"Six hundred pounds."
Again there was a space of silence.
Then the baronet said:
"If I consent to take this liability on my shoulders, it will not be for your sake--that I hope I have already made sufficiently clear--but to save the name of one of the oldest and most honoured families in the kingdom from being dragged through the mire. But not even for that will I do this thing without exacting certain terms from you in return."
"You have but to name your terms, sir, to secure for them an immediate acceptance."
He rose and crossed to the chimney-piece, and taking up a small ornament, examined it for a moment or two. Then, replacing it, he turned and confronted Sir Gilbert, who had now returned to his seat.
"Father," said Alec, and it was the first time he had uttered the word since his arrival, "although it may seem a hard thing for you to credit, I assure you most solemnly that I shall derive infinitely more pleasure from the fact that the honour of the Clares will suffer no stain through my folly, than from the knowledge that my debt has been paid, and that I shall no longer have to fear being posted as a defaulter."
Then, after a momentary pause, he resumed:
"Without wishing in the least to try to extenuate my criminal folly in your eyes, which I am quite aware would be a useless effort, I may yet be allowed to remark that when I entered upon the transaction which has landed me in my present quagmire, I had every possible assurance a man can have in a matter into which the element of chance at all enters, that, instead of being a loser to the extent of six hundred pounds, I should be in pocket to the amount of three thousand. It was one of those things, which, at the time, seemed to me almost as sure as death. The commonest justice to myself compels me to say as much as that."
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