The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

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.