The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight
had spoken slowly and quietly, giving its due emphasis to every word, but he might have been addressing himself to a graven image for any notice his father condescended to accord his words.
He now went back to his seat. Sir Gilbert had removed his chair, so that an oblong mahogany table now divided him and his son. Resting his arms on this and leaning forward a little, Alec said:
"And now, sir, will you be good enough to specify the terms which you propose to exact from me?
"My terms are these," replied Sir Gilbert, in the same tone that he might have used had he been laying down the conditions of a lease with his land-steward: "You will at once leave England, not to return to it without my express sanction. Further, should you choose to reside on the Continent, it must be in some place out of the ordinary lines of travel, where there will be little likelihood of your being seen or recognised by anyone who has known you in England. In return, I will relieve you of your liabilities of every kind whatsoever, and will, in addition, make you an allowance of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum, which shall be remitted to you quarterly through my solicitor, Mr. Page."
By the time Sir Gilbert had finished speaking, Alec's face had paled perceptibly. He lay back in his chair, and for a few seconds his eyes, wide open though they were, saw nothing of all that was around him. His heart beat painfully; he was as a man afflicted with vertigo.
That his father's conditions would be hard, he--knowing the man--had not doubted, but the reality dumfounded him.
Sir Gilbert was toying with his watch-guard, his eyes apparently fixed on a corner of the ceiling.
"Well, sir, have you nothing to say in answer to my proposition?" at length he asked, bringing his gaze back to his son's face. "Do you agree to my terms, or do you reject them?"
"I have no option but to agree to them. Beggars cannot be choosers." The bitterness at his heart made itself apparent in his words.
"Your last statement embodies a great truth, and one which you would do well to bear in mind for the rest of your life," said the baronet, with the nearest approach to a sneer he ever permitted himself. "It may, perhaps, be as well that I should recapitulate the terms of my proposition in order that there may be no after-mistake in the matter."
When he had done so, he said:
"Do you pledge me your word to carry out the conditions as laid down by me, in their entirety?"
"I pledge you my word to that effect."
Sir Gilbert rose and pushed back his chair.
"In that case, I need not detain you further. You know Page's address. Send him at once a complete list of your liabilities, with all needful particulars to enable him to settle the same. He will receive my instructions in the course of to-morrow to advance you a hundred pounds, or rather, to make you a present of them, as I neither know, nor care to know, how you are off for ready money. As soon as you have decided where to bestow your worthless self, you will write Page to that effect. And now I am not aware that I have anything more to add."
Alec had risen by this time and had picked up his hat and cloak. His eyes sought his father's eyes and met them. They stood confronting each other thus while one might have counted six slowly. The younger man's gaze was instinct with a grave questioning wistfulness. As plainly as speech could have done, it said:
"Father, have you no word of forgiveness for me before I go?"
But in Sir Gilbert's chilly blue-grey eyes was to be read no faintest response. Had his son been a stranger, whom he had never before set eyes on, he could not have regarded him with more apparent indifference. With a heavy sigh that seemed to choke back a sob, Alec turned, and crossing to the window by which he had entered, opened it. A moment he paused on the threshold, and threw a backward glance over his shoulder.
"Goodbye, father," he said in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper.
"Goodnight and goodbye," came the response in accents clear and unmoved.
An instant later and Alec was gone. Sir Gilbert waited till the noise of his son's footsteps on the gravel had died away. Then he crossed to the window and refastened the shutters, and drew again the heavy curtains. So departed from the home of his ancestors the heir of Withington Chase.
By this time the night was fair, but although the wind had spent much of its force, it still blew in fitful gusts. Having crossed the lawn and the flower-garden, Alec leaped the sunken fence which divided the latter from the park, and then turning sharply to the right, presently struck into a footpath, well known to him of old, which wound through the belt of timber that sheltered the Chase from the north and north-east winds. Having traversed this, he emerged into a wilder part of the grounds rarely trodden by anyone save an occasional poacher, or by that law-breaker's implacable foe, the gamekeeper, in the course of his nocturnal rounds.
Alec Clare was returning by the way he had come. He had quitted the London train at Westwood station, four miles away, where there was no one who knew him, rather than go on to Mapleford, the station nearest the Chase, where, even at that late hour, he could not have made sure of not being recognised: and he had his own reasons for wishing to keep his midnight visit a secret from everybody. His intention was to climb the wall at the far corner of the park where it abutted on a narrow lane which, at a distance of a quarter of a mile, opened on to the high road that led direct to Westwood station.
He was plunging forward through the rain-soaked bracken, feeling intolerably sore at heart, wroth with himself, his father and the world at large, but most of all with himself, and the prey to a dull heavy pain, which had its origin in the knowledge that he was leaving behind him the home of his birth, his mother's grave, and all the haunts that were inextricably interwoven with the memories of his boyhood, perhaps never to see them again--when suddenly from behind the bole of a huge elm a man stepped full in his path and barred the way.
Alec fell back a step or two with an involuntary exclamation, so startled was he, and next moment the man did the same. He was a big, burly fellow, dressed in velveteens and gaiters, and carrying a stout cudgel in his right hand.
"Why, lawks-a-me, if it ain't Master Alec!" he exclaimed with a gasp of astonishment; "and just as I'd made sure I was a going to cop one o' them confounded poachers. Well, wonders will never cease. I'm mortal glad to see you, sir, anyhow."
The speaker was Martin Rigg, Sir Gilbert's gamekeeper. Alec and he had been firm allies in days gone by. Many a night had the "young master" and the keeper gone the rounds together when the former was supposed to be sound asleep in bed. Many had been their escapades, even to the extent of doing a little night-poaching on their own account. All that Alec knew of woodcraft, of the "gentle art" and of the haunts and habits of birds and animals, he owed to Martin Rigg.
"Yes, it is I, Martin," replied the young man, now thoroughly roused from his abstraction. "If you took me for a poacher, I, at the first glance, took you for a ghost, or something equally as uncanny."
"For the Grey Monk, perhaps?" suggested the keeper, with a chuckle in his voice.
"You forget that the Grey Monk wears a cowl, and not even by starlight could your wide-awake be mistaken for that."
"Wide-awake or no wide-awake, sir, I've reason to believe that more than one timid servant lass has been ready to take her affidavy that she had seen the Grey Monk, when it's only been me that she's caught sight of in the dark, prowling among the trees, on the lookout for gins and snares."
"By the way," said Alec, but with the tone of one whose mind had far more serious things to occupy it, "has anything been seen of the family spectre of late?"
"No, sir--not of late. It's nigh on for three years since it was seen last, and then it was her ladyship who was nearly frightened out of her wits by it. She was coming downstairs at the time, and had reached the lowermost landing, when she saw the Grey Monk glide across the hall in the moonlight. She shrieked out, and they do say she nearly fainted. The best of it was that up to then she had always made light of the ghost, and said its appearances were nothing more than 'lucinations,