The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

But although Ethel chose to go scarcely anywhere, she was not without friends of her own age who came to seek her out in her self-imposed solitude and retail to her the very latest items of local gossip, consisting, as is usual in such cases, of a pretty equal admixture of fact and fiction. Thus it was that she came to learn of the violent quarrel which had taken place between Mr. Launce Keymer and his father, and of how the latter had cut down his son’s allowance of three hundred a year to a pound a week. As a matter of course, a dozen different versions were afloat as to the origin of the quarrel, but, in reality, the facts of the case seemed to be known to no one except the two people concerned. Almost immediately afterwards Launce had left the town, and among all his intimates there was not one who professed to know where he had gone, or what had become of him.

All this was recounted to Ethel as a piece of news which would be likely to interest her as one who had known Launce Keymer and had met him several times in society in the course of the previous summer and winter. There was no faintest suspicion in the narrator’s mind, so carefully had the secret of Ethel’s brief engagement been kept, that for the latter her news might have an interest very different from any that she imagined.

When Ethel assured Miss Matilda that the wound from which she was suffering was one which time would quickly heal, she stated no more than she felt to be the fact. Between her and the man whose wife she had promised to become, everything was at an end; and although the relief was great—greater perhaps than she was aware of—she yet felt as if there was a void in her inner life which had never been there before. Her heart was empty. The doors of the temple were shut and the flame of the altar, which, truth to tell, had been of the frailest and feeblest, had been blown suddenly out. But Ethel turned away from brooding over the past and set her face resolutely towards the future.

And so the summer wore on until the crown of it was turned and autumn was drawing on apace. It was Tamsin, whose eyes were ever keen where her darling was concerned, who was the first to notice that the wild-rose tints of Ethel’s cheeks were paling to the delicate ivory of the lily. She watched her closely for several days without saying a word to anyone. At length she made up her mind to speak. It was Miss Jane’s month, and to her she went.

“The child will just end by moping herself into a decline,” said the sturdy dame after a few preliminary remarks. “Look at her cheeks—not a morsel of colour left in ’em, but just as if it had all been washed out. And then, her appetite! I’ve watched her at meal-times, and she hardly eats more than enough to keep a canary alive. And when did she sing last, pray, without being asked—she that used to be as merry as a thrush about the house and needed no asking at all? And her laugh that used to do one’s heart good to hear—that’s dead and buried. Whoever hears it nowadays?”

“But what is to be done, Tamsin?” pleaded Miss Jane, thoroughly frightened by the picture the old woman had drawn. “Where is a remedy to be found?”

“That is hardly for me to say, Miss Jane. But if Miss Ethel were a niece of mine, I’m pretty clear what I would do.”

“And what would that be, Tamsin? You know that my sister and I are always pleased to listen to your suggestions.”

“I should take her right away to the seaside, or to some place where she’s never been before. It’s change the girl wants. At her age they all need it. It’s only when folk get elderly that they grow loth to leave their own chimney-corner. Young birds always want to try their wings; and to young folk it always seems as if there must be something better on the far side of the hill than on the side their eyes are used to.”

“But the expense,” faltered Miss Jane. “My sister and I have very little money by us, and our next dividends will not be due till the new year. And at the seaside one is robbed so terribly—at least, that is what we term it—although they, no doubt, call it by a different name.”