 
Transcriber's Notes: Chapters 1-25. "The Argosy. Vol. LVII. Chapters 26-51. "The Argosy. Vol. LVIII. 2. Illustrations (by M. L. Gow) are not reproduced here.
THE GREY MONK.
By T. W. SPEIGHT.
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS | |
| CHAP. | |
| I. | Alec's Sentence. |
| II, | An Old Family and its Home. |
| III. | Alec's Proposition. |
| IV. | An Offer and its Acceptance. |
| V. | At One Fell Blow. |
| VI. | Alec's Fate. |
| VII. | Too Late. |
| VIII. | The Ebony Casket. |
| IX. | Ethel and Tamsin. |
| X. | Launce Keymer. |
| XI. | Hopes and Fears. |
| XII. | A Recreant Lover. |
| XIII. | Captain Verinder and his Visitor. |
| XIV. | The Captain Takes a Little Journey. |
| XV. | Conspirators Three. |
| XVI. | How Sir Gilbert received the News. |
| XVII. | Sir Gilbert and Giovanna. |
| XVIII. | The False Heir. |
| XIX. | Luigi Acknowledged. |
| XX. | Sir Gilbert's Decision. |
| XXI. | Affairs at St. Oswyth's. |
| XXII. | Father and Son. |
| XXIII. | Ethel's Confession |
| XXIV. | Tamsin Speaks her Mind. |
| XXV. | Lady Pell. |
| XXVI. | Giovanna at Maylings. |
| XXVII. | "Mr. Lewis Clare." |
| XXVIII. | The Progress of Events. |
| XXIX. | Arrivals at the Chase. |
| XXX. | An Unexpected Meeting. |
| XXXI. | Luigi's Escapade. |
| XXXII. | Sir Gilbert's Decision. |
| XXXIII. | Uncle and Nephew. |
| XXXIV. | A Desperate Resolve. |
| XXXV. | Matters at the Chase. |
| XXXVI. | A Deed of Darkness. |
| XXXVII. | The Defeat of Roguery. |
| XXXVIII. | Unanswered Questions. |
| XXXIX. | The Counsel of Experience. |
| XL. | "Love took up the Harp of Life." |
| XLI. | Sir Gilbert's Strange Experience. |
| XLII. | Sir Gilbert's Theory. |
| XLIII. | The Root of the Mystery. |
| XLIV. | Back at St. Oswyth's. |
| XLV. | "Come Back to Me." |
| XLVI. | Unknitted Threads. |
| XLVII. | Husband and Wife. |
| XLVIII. | Sir Gilbert's Great Surprise. |
| XLIX. | Payment in Full. |
| L. | The Veiled Stranger. |
| LI. | Safe in Port. |
THE GREY MONK.
By The Author Of "The Mysteries Of Heron Dyke."
CHAPTER I.
ALEC'S SENTENCE.
It was a wild and stormy October night. The big moon-faced clock in the entrance-hall, in its slow and solemn fashion, as of a horologe that felt the burden of its years, had just announced the hour of eleven.
In his study alone, busy among his coins and curios, sat Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, and Chase Ridings, Yorkshire, a handsome, well-preserved man, in years somewhere between fifty and sixty. He had a tall, thin, upright figure, strongly marked features of an aquiline type, a snow-white moustache, and an expression at once proud and imperious.
It would, indeed, have been difficult to find a prouder man than Sir Gilbert. He was proud of the long line of his ancestors, of the brave men and beautiful women who, from their faded frames in the picture gallery, seemed to smile approval on the latest representative of their race. He was proud of the unsullied name which had come down to him from them, on which no action of his had ever cast the shadow of a stain. He was proud of the position, which he accepted as his by right, in his native county; he was proud of his three sturdy boys, at this hour wrapped in the sleep of innocent childhood. But his pride was strictly locked up in his own bosom. No syllable ever escaped him which told of its existence. To the world at large, and even to the members of his own household, he was a man of a quick and irascible temper, of cold manners and unsympathetic ways.
Proud as Sir Gilbert had just cause for being, there was one point, and one that could in no wise be ignored, at which his pride was touched severely.
His eldest son and heir was a disappointment and a failure. He had fought against the knowledge as long as it had been possible for him to do so, but some months had now gone by since the bitter truth had forced itself upon him in a way he could no longer pretend to ignore. He had caused private inquiries to be made, the result of which had satisfied him that, from being simply a good-natured harum-scarum spendthrift, the young man was gradually degenerating into a betting man and a turf gambler of a type especially obnoxious to the fastidious baronet. He told himself that he would almost as soon have had his son become a common pickpocket.
It never entered his mind to suspect that the evidence of Alec's delinquencies which had been laid before him, and to obtain which he had paid a heavy price, might, to some extent, have been manufactured; that the shadows of the picture might have been purposely darkened in order that he might be supplied with that which he presumably looked for. He had accepted it in full and without question.
It had been Alec's misfortune to get mixed up with a fast set while at college, and he seemed never to have quite broken with them afterwards.
At the Chase he and his stepmother had not got on well together--for the present Lady Clare was the baronet's second wife--and when, shortly after coming of age, he announced his intention of making his home, for a time at least, with some of his mother's relatives in London, Sir Gilbert had offered no opposition to the arrangement, for he was wise enough to recognise that two such opposite dispositions as those of his present wife and his eldest son could not possibly agree.
Then it presently came to his ears that Alec had gone into bachelor quarters of his own, after which came a long course of extravagances and debts of various kinds, such as well-to-do fathers have had to put up with from spendthrift sons for more centuries than history can tell us of.
Twice he had paid Alec's debts and started him afresh with a clean slate; but on the second occasion he had given him plainly to understand that he must look for no further help in that line, but confine himself strictly to the fairly liberal allowance which had been settled on him when he came of age. Despite the determination thus expressed, no very long time had elapsed before a couple of tradesmen's accounts for considerable sums were received by the baronet, with a request for an early liquidation of the same--not, however, sent by Alec, but by the creditors themselves. Instead of returning the bills to their senders, as most parents would have done, with a curt disavowal of all liability, Sir Gilbert chose rather to confiscate his son's allowance to the amount of the debts in question.
From that time, now upwards of half a year ago, there had been no communication of any kind between father and son. Alec, however, was not left wholly without means, he having still an income of a hundred and eighty pounds a year, derivable from funded property left him by his mother.
Sir Gilbert had had an agreeable surprise in the course of the day with the evening of which we are now concerned, and yet it was a surprise not untinged with sadness.
His old friend Mr. Jopling, like himself an ardent numismatist and collector, had died a few weeks before, much to the baronet's regret. To-day there had reached him a tiny packet, forwarded by Mr. Jopling's executors, containing a couple of rare coins bequeathed him by his dead friend. One of them was a gold stater of Argos, with the head of Hera, the reverse being Diomedes carrying the palladium; while the other was a scarce fifty-shilling piece of Cromwell. Sir Gilbert had long envied his friend the possession of them, and now they were his own; therefore was the feeling with which he regarded them one of mingled pleasure and pain.
He had devoted the evening to a rearrangement of the contents of some of his cases and cabinets and to deciding upon a resting-place for his newly-acquired treasures.
It had been a labour of love. But, for all that, his thoughts every now and again would keep reverting from the pleasant task he had set himself to his eldest son; for this was the latter's birthday, a fact which the father could not forget, although he would fain have kept it in the background of his memory. On just such a wild night twenty-four years before, had John Alexander Clare been born. With what bright hopes, with what glowing expectations he had been welcomed on the stage of life, Sir Gilbert alone could have told. A groan broke involuntarily from his lips when he pictured in thought the difference between then and now. His heart was very bitter against his son.
The night was creeping on apace.
In the great house everybody was in bed save the baronet, who was addicted to solitude and late hours. Outside, at recurring intervals, the wind blew in great stormy gusts, which anon died down to an inarticulate sobbing and wailing, as it might be of some lost spirit wandering round the old mansion, seeking ingress but finding none. There were voices in the wide-mouthed chimney; the rain lashed the windows furiously; by daybreak the trees would be nearly bare and all the woodways be covered by a sodden carpet of fallen leaves. Summer was dead indeed.
Suddenly, in a lull of the gale, Sir Gilbert was startled into the most vivid wakefulness by an unmistakable tapping at one of the two long windows which lighted the room. He listened in rigid silence till the tapping came again. Then he crossed to the window whence the sound had proceeded, and after having drawn back the curtains and unbarred 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."
He 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, whatever they may be. But she never said so after that night. Sir Gilbert was awfully wild when he heard about it, and would fain have hushed it up; but it was too late. However, that's an old wife's tale by this time. As I said afore, sir, I'm mortal glad to see you."
"Not for one moment do I doubt you, old friend. All the same, I am sure you would like to know why I am here and where I am bound for at this hour of the night. Listen! there is the turret clock striking twelve. Well, I will tell you."
He waited till the clock had done striking; then resumed:
"I have just left my father. He and I have said goodbye to each other for a long time to come. I am on my way to Westwood station: you know the near cut. Forty-eight hours hence I shall have left England, to return I know not when."
"I am main sorry to hear that, Master Alec," remarked the keeper in a tone of real concern. In common with everybody connected with the Chase, and a good many people in no wise connected with it--for such things cannot be kept secret--he was cognisant of the breach between Sir Gilbert and his heir, and could form a pretty shrewd guess as to the origin of it.
"And I am no less sorry to have it to tell," replied Alec. "Now, when I tell you further that I don't want anyone to know of my present visit to the Chase, nor to hear from your lips that you have as much as set eyes on me, you will, I am sure, respect my wishes."
"O' course I will, sir. You may make yourself easy on that score. I dreamt as I saw you--that's all--and I don't tell my dreams to nobody."
CHAPTER II.
AN OLD FAMILY AND ITS HOME.
Withington Chase was a fine old Jacobean mansion, which had been added to from time to time as whim or necessity had dictated.
The walls of the original structure were composed of small red bricks, relieved at frequent intervals, as far as the main frontage was concerned, by fluted pilasters of white stone with Ionic capitals, which, when seen from a little distance, had all the effect of marble. However incongruous and out of keeping with the general scheme of the house the various additions which had been patched on to it during the course of the last two centuries might have seemed when they were crude and new, Time's chastening fingers had mellowed them to a certain degree of beauty, so that in these latter days the general effect was that of a harmonious and homogeneous whole.
Originally there had been a much older mansion, which, after having been partially destroyed by fire, had been razed to the ground, all of it save one sturdy fragment which, for some unknown reason, had been allowed to stand.
This relic of a state of things long vanished was an octagonal tower, about sixty feet in height, built of undressed blocks of grey stone, held together by a mortar as hard as themselves. The interior of the tower consisted of three small rooms, one above the other, with a leaded roof surmounted by a breast-high parapet. Each of the rooms was lighted by a couple of long narrow openings in the wall, which at one time might have been glazed, but were so no longer. Of these rooms the ground floor one alone was now put to any service, access to the others, owing to the rotten state of the woodwork, being deemed a risk not worth adventuring. The basement in question was used as a receptacle for gardeners' tools, and a general storage place for things horticultural, which had been allowed to accumulate there for years.
As already stated, the tower had formed a part of the older mansion of Withington Chase, although what the intention had been in building it, and to what special purposes it had been put, nobody nowadays seemed to know. There it was, however; and there--the elements being its only enemies--it was likely to remain for some centuries to come. It was about five or six hundred yards apart from the more modern mansion, the space between the two being occupied by the belt of timber before mentioned.
The main entrance to Withington Chase was approached by a broad carriage-drive, which swept with a graceful curve from the lodge some half a mile away. The park was well timbered, and contained a number of grand old trees said to have been planted before the present mansion was in existence. In front of the house, but intersected by the drive, was a spacious expanse of closely-shaven lawn, to the right of which was a small but choicely kept flower-garden, while on its left was a shrubbery of tall clipped hedges and thick clumps of evergreens, among the sheltered paths of which Sir Gilbert found it pleasant to take his constitutional when the weather was too cold and raw to allow of his walking elsewhere in the open air.
The master of Withington Chase was proud of his long descent, and that not without reason.
He could trace back his pedigree on the male side in unbroken sequence to the time of Henry IV. One head of the family had fought at Agincourt, another had distinguished himself at Malplaquet; while scions of the family, more than one could count on one's fingers, had fought and, in several cases, died for their king and country wherever the British flag had penetrated. Quite a number of Clares had been in Parliament from time to time, and if none of them had been noted for his eloquence, or had risen to office, they had all possessed the negative virtue of being staunch voters, men whose political opinions could be relied upon never to stray beyond the hard and fast lines laid down by their own party.
The present baronet had taken no share in public affairs, and had declined more than once to allow himself to be nominated for a seat in Parliament. An occasional appearance on the magisterial bench, which grew still more occasional with advancing years, just sufficed to remind his brother justices and the good folk of Mapleford, that Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase had not yet been gathered to his ancestors in the family vault.
Sir Gilbert, at the age of five-and-twenty, had inherited an impoverished estate, and, by consequence, a diminished revenue.
His father had been a man of fashion and a gamester, under the Regency, and in the course of a few years of reckless expenditure had contrived to undo the work of several generations of thrifty progenitors. This was a state of things which the young baronet at once set himself to remedy. The town house and its contents were sold to the highest bidder; the Yorkshire property was let on lease to a wealthy manufacturer; while the Withington establishment was cut down to the lowest limits compatible with keeping up his station in the county.
Unfortunately for his worldly prospects--and he was the first to admit the fact later on--Sir Gilbert had married about a year prior to his father's death, and, little likely as one would have deemed him, with his cold temperament, to commit such an imprudence, had married for love. His bride had come of a good family, but beyond a trifling dowry of a few thousand pounds, had had nothing save a pretty face, and a piquant manner to recommend her. Such as she was, however, she had contrived to fascinate the haughty young heir of Withington Chase.
Alas! that it should have to be told, but in the course of a few brief years after marriage the pretty face had become a memory of the past, and the piquant manner had degenerated into the querulous repinings of a semi-invalid; for Lady Clare was one of those women who find in a naturally delicate constitution an ample excuse for shirking all the active duties of life, and for coddling themselves into a state of chronic invalidism, the chief features of which, in her case, seemed to be reclining the day through on a couch, and being waited on, hand and foot, by everyone about her.
Under these circumstances it was scarcely to be wondered at that, after a time, Sir Gilbert's home-life became intolerable to him. He was by nature of a restless disposition, with a strong inclination for travel and adventure, and by degrees his absences from the Chase grew longer, till at length it came to pass that he would be away for several months at a time.
It was during one of these absences that his wife died, greatly to his surprise and relief. She had so coddled herself up for years, and had made of herself such a hothouse plant, that a slight chill, too trivial in the first instance to seem worth notice, had sufficed to carry her off. She left behind her a son ten years old, the John Alexander Clare to whom we have already been introduced.
Whatever might have been Lady Clare's defects in other ways, she had passionately loved her child.
Unfortunately, however, not content with loving him, she had done her best to spoil him. This, Sir Gilbert's frequent absences had allowed her ample opportunities for doing. When he was at the Chase it was tacitly understood between mother and son that matters were on a different footing. At such times her ladyship curbed, in some measure, the display of her affection, and Alec left off bird-nesting and consorting with Martin Rigg, and attended assiduously at the rectory, where the Rev. Bruce Amor was doing his best to ground him in the humanities.
With his mother's death everything was changed for Alec.
Whether Sir Gilbert had all along been aware of the way in which his son was being spoiled, but had his own reasons for ignoring the fact, or whether some meddler had made it his business to enlighten him, the result was the same as far as the boy was concerned. In place of good, easy-going Mr. Amor, he was now put under the charge of a tutor whose reputation as a martinet had been his chief qualification in the eyes of the baronet. Mr. Duggan's instructions were to prepare the lad for a public school and in the meantime, as Sir Gilbert expressed it, to "break him in."
And now for Alec began an experience which was all the harder to bear by reason of what had gone before.
The new tutor was like a baleful shadow which dogged him wherever he went. From the time he rose till the time he went to bed he could never get rid of him for more than a few minutes at a time. It was a tyranny which at length became almost unbearable and went far towards breaking the lad's all but indomitable spirit.
One day, when he had been only a few weeks at the Chase, Mr. Duggan, with the view, perhaps, of keeping up his reputation as a martinet, chose, by way of punishment for some trifling fault, to administer a sound caning to his pupil. The lad took his punishment without a murmur, but half an hour later, he was missing; nor, when search came to be made, was he anywhere to be found.
Alec, however, was no great distance away.
Being nearly as active as a squirrel, he had climbed the bole of one of the big old trees in the park, and there, for two days and nights--the month being June--he lay perdu in his leafy shelter, being supplied with food meanwhile by Martin Rigg, who was the only person in the secret of his hiding-place. It was only his father's threat, conveyed to him by that faithful servitor, to send for Captain Darville's bloodhounds and so track him down, that induced him to give himself up.
For this freak he was sentenced to a week of bread-and-water in a darkened room. Even so, he was not left wholly forlorn, food and candles and books being surreptitiously conveyed to him from the servants' hall. But Mr. Duggan never laid hands on him again.
In due course this period of his life came to an end, and it was with something of the feeling of a captive released after a long imprisonment that he one day found himself on his way to Harrow, from which place, in the natural sequence of things, he proceeded to Cambridge.
All his life Alec had stood in awe of his father. It was a feeling which, to some extent, had been fostered by his mother. To both of them it had been as a load lifted off their lives when the baronet left home on one of his excursions, and both had looked forward with dread to his return. There had been no cordiality, no sympathy, no rapprochement in any proper sense of the word, between father and son.
That, however, had been owing to no fault on the boy's part, for Alec's was one of those bright, open dispositions which respond readily to whatever kindly influences may be brought to bear on them. But Sir Gilbert had no liking for children, or young people, and it was not in his nature to make any exception even in the case of his own son. He had kept himself aloof from him from the first, and with the lapse of years the silent, passive breach between the two, if such it could be termed, grew gradually wider and more impossible of being bridged over. Many an hour's heartache had the boy, more especially after his mother's death, but there was too large a tincture of family pride in his composition to allow of even an inkling of what he felt to be visible on the surface. More than once in after-life he said bitterly to himself: "If when I was young, my father had treated me as other fathers treat their sons, I should have been a different man from what I am now."
That might, or might not, have been the case.
It was while Alec was at Harrow that Sir Gilbert married again.
There was no question of sentiment mixed up with his second matrimonial venture, as there had been with his first. It was the simple fact of Miss Delmayne being possessed of a fortune of sixty thousand pounds in her own right that led him to propose to her.
On her part, the lady, who had seen thirty summers, had no illusions. She was perfectly aware for what reason she was being sought, but, all the same, it seemed to her that she would have been very foolish to let slip the chance of becoming Lady Clare, of Withington Chase.
She was a capable, managing woman, who allowed her husband to go and come and do just as he liked, without any repining or questioning on her part--a mode of procedure which just suited the baronet. On the other hand, she tolerated no interference in domestic matters, or the indoor management of the Chase. It may be accounted as a virtue in her that she was no more inclined for an extravagant style of living than was her husband. Still more did this become the case after her three sons were born; indeed, for the sake of their future she began after a time to develop a disposition which, in a person of her social position, might almost be termed penurious.
Lady Clare's special grievance, and it was one which debarred her from seeking the sympathy of others--the one thorn in her pillow--was the existence of her husband's eldest son.
In that particular, if in no other, it seemed to her that Providence had dealt hardly with her. No such person ought to have been born; or, if that could not have been avoided, his sojourn in this vale of tears should have been of the briefest. To her it seemed a monstrous thing that anyone other than her own darling Randolph should be the legal heir to his father's title and estates. More especially hard did it seem to her in view of the fact that a third of the dowry she had brought her husband had gone to clear off certain old mortgages contracted by the preceding baronet, and in so far, might be said to have benefited the estate in perpetuity.
Yet, in the face of this, Randolph, at his father's death, would only be entitled to a younger son's share of the baronet's savings--provided there should be any to divide--both the Hertfordshire and the Yorkshire estates being strictly entailed. Her ladyship felt that she had indeed just cause for repining.
She was coldly gracious to Alec, whenever that young man made his appearance at the Chase, which, as time went on, became less frequently than ever. He felt that he was not wanted at home, that he had now become less to his father even than he had been before, and he knew that his instincts did not deceive him when they told him that in her ladyship he had an enemy whom no efforts on his part would avail to conciliate.
It was as well, perhaps, for more reasons than one, that Lady Clare had no knowledge of the considerable sums disbursed by the baronet from time to time in liquidation of the debts contracted by his spendthrift heir. In those matters Mr. Page, the family solicitor, was the only person taken into Sir Gilbert's confidence. It was a source of gratification to her ladyship to know that father and son lived on permanently bad terms with each other; and when, after that October night which saw the heir banished from home, her husband told her that Alec had gone abroad, and that they were not likely to be troubled with him or his affairs again for a long time to come, she sincerely rejoiced. Alec was wild and careless of his health, and reckless in many ways. There was no knowing what might come to pass. It no longer seemed to her the foolish daydream she had deemed it heretofore, that she might, perhaps, live to hear her son addressed as Sir Randolph Clare of Withington Chase.
It was well for her ladyship, as it is for all of us, that there was no invisible hand to draw aside the curtain of the future and reveal to her even a glimpse of what was to be.
Meanwhile, the real heir had unaccountably vanished from the haunts which had known him, and was as one dead to that little world in which he had been such a familiar figure. No word of him, or message of any kind reached his whilom associates. A vague rumour got spread about, originating no one seemed to know how or whence, that he had joined a certain exploring expedition which just then was being a good deal talked about; but it was a rumour which was never confirmed.
Men talked and wondered for a little while, and then presently he was forgotten.
CHAPTER III.
ALEC'S PROPOSITION.
With the inmates of Withington Chase two uneventful years glided imperceptibly away. Between Sir Gilbert and his wife the name of the proscribed heir was never mentioned; to all seeming he had vanished out of their lives as completely as if he had never existed. That his image still dwelt more or less in his father's thoughts was only in the natural order of things, but to faithful Mr. Page alone, from whom the baronet had few or no secrets, did Alec's name ever cross his lips, and to him no oftener than was unavoidable.
The lawyer had duly remitted his quarterly allowance to the young man, forwarding it now to one obscure continental town and now to another, in accordance with Alec's written request; but, beyond that, nothing whatever was known of him or his whereabouts.
Then one day the baronet received a letter from his son, dated from Catanzaro, a small out-of-the-way town in southern Italy.
In it the writer stated that he was utterly tired of the idle, purposeless life he had been leading for the past two years, and that if his father would agree to give him six thousand pounds down, he would emigrate to the United States and never trouble him for another shilling as long as he lived. But he would do more, much more, than that, should his father consent to his proposition. In that case he would agree to the cutting off of the entail and would sign whatever documents might be needful for the due carrying out of that design. Sir Gilbert sat staring at the letter after he had finished reading it like a man whose faculties had been paralysed by sheer amazement.
So absorbed was his attention that he was unconscious of the door behind him being opened and of the entry of his wife. Her footfalls made no noise on the thick carpet. She went up behind him and was on the point of placing a hand on his shoulder, when her gaze vas attracted to the letter which lay spread open on the writing-table in front of him.
Lady Clare was more than a score of years younger than her husband and her eyesight was still as keen as ever it had been. Half-a-dozen seconds sufficed her to take in the sense of Alec's letter, the handwriting of which she had at once recognised. A little gasp escaped her before she knew it. An instant later the baronet had started to his feet, and was confronting her with flaming eyes; involuntarily his hand closed over the letter.
"Madam, I am not in the habit of being startled in this way," he said, "nor do I like it."
"On the contrary, dear, it was you who startled me," she replied in her blandest accents, with a hand pressed to her left side. "Of course I naturally supposed that you had heard the door opened and shut, and was on the point of addressing you when you started up as if you had been shot."
"Humph! I have had occasion before to-day to beg of you not to be quite so feline in your movements," he answered with something like a snarl. "Did you--did you read any portion of the letter that was on the table in front of me?"
"My dear Gilbert, what do you take me for! That there was a letter there, I am aware, but as for reading as much as a line of it----"
"There, there, that will do. Just ring the bell, will you, and then tell me what you want to see me about."
When the servant came in response to the summons, he said: "Tell Graves to bring the dog-cart round at once."
Ten minutes later saw Sir Gilbert on his way to Mapleford with his son's letter in his pocket. In such a contingency he felt that he could not do better than seek the advice of his valued counsellor.
Mr. Page, a tall, lanky, somewhat loose-jointed man, with a long thin face, a prominent nose and an expression that was a curious compound of hard common sense, shrewdness and good-nature, gave vent to a low whistle when he had come to the end of Alec's epistle.
"What an exceedingly foolish young man!" were his first words.
"Why so, pray--why so?" demanded the baronet with a lifting of his eyebrows.
"To offer to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage--for that is what he here proposes to do."
"Six thousand pounds is a large sum, Page."
"In itself it may perhaps seem so, but what is it in comparison with the reversion of Withington Chase and the other entailed property? Why, it's not equivalent to one year's rent-roll! A very foolish young man!"
"It is to be presumed that he knows his own business best," remarked the baronet drily. "Besides, you seem to forget the many hundreds of pounds--nay, I may say thousands--that I have had to disburse at different times by reason of his extravagance."
The lawyer shook his head.
"There's more under the surface, I feel convinced, than either you or I yet know of." Then, after a pause, during which he seemed lost in thought, he added, "I should not be in the least surprised if a woman were at the bottom of this business."
The baronet was startled.
"That is a possibility which did not suggest itself to me," he said. "It would, indeed, be just like Alec to finish up his career by contracting a low marriage." Then with a shrug he added: "But he can please himself about that when once the proposition embodied by him in his letter has been duly carried into effect."
"Then you really mean to accept his offer to cut off the entail?"
"I do. If I had any hesitation before, your last suggestion would have effectually disposed of it. I am certainly inclined to believe that you have hit upon the real reason which underlies his offer. Well, I am glad he has sufficient sense and good-feeling left to betake himself to a country where there's not a creature who knows him. In that case a mÉsalliance on his part will be a matter of very minor consequence. And now let us consider by what means we can most readily lay our hands on six thousand pounds."
A week later Sir Gilbert and Mr. Page set out for Italy.
It had never been the baronet's practice to take his wife into his confidence about matters which, from his point of view, did not concern her, consequently he had kept his own counsel as far as Alec's letter and its contents were concerned. It would be time enough to tell her after the all-important document should have been signed by which Alec renounced his birthright. He began to regard young Randolph, the present Lady Clare's eldest son, with very different eyes from those with which he had hitherto looked upon the boy. A few more days and he would be the heir of Withington. The pity of it was that the title could not descend to him as well as the estates. That was a point as to which the law was manifestly to blame.
Lady Clare betrayed not the slightest interest as to the nature of the business which was taking her husband and Mr. Page all the way to Italy. So well did she play her part that no faintest suspicion entered Sir Gilbert's mind that she had any knowledge of the existence of Alec's letter, much less of the nature of its contents. She judged, and rightly, that her husband would not have been at the trouble to go to Italy and take his lawyer with him, unless he had agreed to accept the terms proposed by his eldest son. After all, then, the one great grievance of her life would cease to exist, and her darling Randolph would become his father's heir, as he ought to have been all along! Only herself knew with what eager anxiety she awaited her husband's return. Surely, surely, he would not be so cruel as to keep the good news from her an hour after it should be his to tell! He could not fail to know how happy it would make her.
The theory propounded by Mr. Page as to the motive which lay at the foundation of Alec's letter to his father, was not very wide of the mark. Had it not been for a certain pair of brilliant black eyes, in all probability it would never have been written.
About six months before, in the course of his aimless wanderings Alec had found himself and his very limited luggage at Catanzaro, a small but romantically situated Calabrian town, a few miles inland from the Gulf of Squillace.
The place had pleased him and he had made up his mind to stay there awhile.
He had accordingly taken up his quarters at the principal osteria, kept by one Giuseppe Rispani. Alec lived very simply, and, of late, had learnt to confine his wants within narrow limits, so that his father's allowance, conjointly with his own income of one hundred and eighty pounds a year, amply sufficed for all his needs.
Rispani was a widower with one son, who had lately left home for England in the hope of bettering his fortunes, and one daughter, Giovanna by name, at that time a beautiful girl of nineteen.
Rispani's wife had been an Englishwoman, whom he had married for the sake of her little fortune of five hundred pounds, while she had married him for his beaux yeaux; for in early life the Italian had been a very handsome man, with a soft tongue and a persuasive manner which poor Miss Verinder had found it impossible to resist.
The Signora Rispani, who at one time had been a governess, and, later on, companion to a lady of rank, was a woman of considerable education and refinement. She took great pains with the tuition and bringing up of her daughter, and to her mother Giovanna owed it that she was almost as familiar with the English tongue as the Italian.
Unfortunately the Signora died when Giovanna was about thirteen years old, just the age when a mother's care and watchfulness were most needed, for the girl's disposition, like her father's, was cold, calculating, and avaricious; and when the one person was gone whose untiring effort it had been to keep down the weeds of selfishness and greed of which her nature was so prolific--for the Signora had by no means been blind to her daughter's defects--it was not difficult to foretell what the result would be.
If Giuseppe Rispani had known anything of the doctrine of heredity, he might have pointed to his daughter as a living example of it as far as the reproduction in her of certain of his own most predominant qualities was concerned.
In appearance Giovanna was a true daughter of the sunny South.
Her figure was tall, with a certain stateliness of carriage that became her well. Her complexion was of the clearest and most transparent olive, her eyes and hair as black as midnight, while her features were almost classic in the regularity of their outlines. In any country in the world Giovanna Rispani would have been accounted a very beautiful young woman.
Vanna had not reached the age of nineteen without having had several suitors, eligible and otherwise, for her hand, but to one and all she had turned a deaf ear. Her father had in no wise tried to influence her choice, being, indeed, firmly persuaded in his own mind that it would have been futile to attempt to do so; but had merely laughed pleasantly as each baffled aspirant went his way, and remarked that Vanna, had plenty of time before her in which to make up her mind.
Alec Clare had not been many days an inmate of the osteria of the Golden Fig before it became clear to Vanna Rispani, that in the tall, handsome young Englishman, she had achieved another conquest.
Vanna had never made a practice of waiting on her father's guests, holding herself, indeed, somewhat haughtily aloof, but she condescended to wait on Alec. It was not his looks that attracted her, but the fact that in him she found some one who could talk to her in her mother's native tongue.
She was proud of her ability to speak English, but it was an acquisition which had been in some danger of becoming rusty from disuse; now, however, a day rarely passed without she and Alec having at least one long talk together. To him, too, who had lived for the last two years among what might be termed the byeways of life, it was an inexpressible pleasure to have lighted on some one with whom he could converse in his own tongue; for although by this time he could speak Italian almost as fluently as a native, his thoughts and self-communings were all couched in the language to which he had been born.
Giovanna was wholly free from self-consciousness and mauvaise honte; she was as self-possessed as a woman twice her age; consequently there was a charming ease and naturalness in her intercourse with Alec, which he found increasingly fascinating as time went on.
It was surprising what a number of things they found to talk about, and how naturally one subject seemed to lead up to another. If sometimes Alec's talk went a little over the girl's head, if he now and then started a subject which for her was devoid of interest, she was careful not to betray the fact. She might be secretly bored, but her lips never lost their smile, nor her eyes their sparkle.
The heir of Withington Chase lingered on week after week in the little Italian town till a couple of months had gone by, without caring to ask himself why he did so.
At length the time came when he had neither the power nor the will to tear himself away. Self-deception was a species of weakness in which he had never indulged; he had always dealt frankly with himself, and he did so now. He was in love with the innkeeper's daughter, and he admitted it. More than once, in years gone by, his fancy had been taken captive, but in every case the day had come, and that after no long time, when he had snapped the silken thread that loosely held him, and had gone on his way again, heart whole and fancy free.
But it was no frail silken chain that held him now: he was a helpless captive bound hand and foot in Love's golden fetters.
When, however, he asked himself what prospect there was of his passion being reciprocated, he could but reply that he had no grounds whatever for answering the question in his own favour. That Vanna sought his society and that she derived a certain amount of pleasure from it, could not be doubted; but, on the other hand, every one of those signs was wanting which are supposed to foreshadow the dawn of love in a young girl's heart. She was as easy and unembarrassed in his company as in that of her father, which, of itself; seemed to indicate the absence of any special regard for him. And yet there were times when an inscrutable something glanced at him for a moment out of the depths of her magnificent eyes and kindled a sudden flame of hope in his heart, which, if it quickly died down again, left behind it a certain glow less evanescent than itself.
At length a time arrived when it became clear to Alec that matters between himself and Vanna could not go on much longer as they were. The state of uncertainty in which he lived was fast becoming intolerable to him. Not much longer could he keep silent. He would give words to the passion that was consuming him and win all or lose all by the result.
On more than one occasion in the course of their many talks together, Giovanna had so far opened her mind as to confide to Alec the longing which beset her to get away from the dull and narrow routine of her life in her native town. She wanted to see something of the world, to live a larger and freer existence in some country beyond the sea.
Probably it was owing to the influence of these talks that the inception of the scheme was due which, a few weeks later, Alec embodied in his letter to his father.
Should the latter prove willing to give him the sum he had specified, he would ask Giovanna to become his wife, and if she consented, he would seek with her a home in the New World, where his six thousand pounds would, he confidently hoped, prove the corner-stone from which to build up one of those colossal fortunes in comparison with which the revenues of Withington Chase would seem insignificant indeed. In any case, as he truthfully stated in his letter, he was heartily sick of the idle, purposeless existence he had been leading for a couple of years. For aught he knew to the contrary, his father might never revoke the promise extracted from him not to return to England till leave should be given him to do so.
Meanwhile his life was slowly rusting away.
CHAPTER IV.
AN OFFER AND ITS ACCEPTANCE.
Sir Gilbert Clare and Mr. Page reached Catanzaro in due course. They were met by Alec, who had been apprised by the lawyer of the time when they might be expected to arrive, and who had secured rooms for them at the Golden Fig, the osteria at which he himself had been a guest for so long a time.
Father and son greeted each other with a grave silent bow. Alec flushed to the roots of his hair as soon as he realized that it was Sir Gilbert's intention to treat him as a stranger; then as suddenly he turned pale. Next moment his pride came to his aid. He drew himself up, and turning courteously to Mr. Page, expressed to him his fear that he must have found the journey both tedious and fatiguing.
At dinner, which had been ordered by Alec beforehand, the two arrivals were waited upon by Rispani in person. This also was by arrangement with Alec, who, for some reason which he could not have defined to himself, was desirous that, for the time being, Giovanna should keep in the background.
It is to be borne in mind that Rispani had no suspicion, either then or afterwards, that the English "Milor" was Alec's father, or, indeed, any relation whatever of the young man. Ever since he had come abroad, young Clare had dropped his surname and had simply been known as "Mr. John Alexander," a cognomen which his Italian friends, to whom the English syllables seemed a concatenation of barbarous sounds, had not failed to naturalise into "Il Signor Alessandro."