The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

Now did he understand how it happened that from the first he had felt himself so unaccountably drawn towards her. He had read something in her face which had at once puzzled and attracted him; it had been to him like one of those faces which sometimes confront one in dreams, which one seems to know vaguely, but which utterly sets at defiance all one’s efforts to endue it with a personality. But surmise and conjecture were at an end. She was his child—his own! He had proved it beyond the possibility of a doubt. So strange, so bewildering, and yet so wonderfully sweet did it seem, that for the time he was as a man walking in a phantasy.

Everard Lisle, on reaching London, had found Luigi Rispani and had obtained from him the address he subsequently gave John Clare, which enabled the latter to go direct to the boarding-house where his wife was staying.

Luigi was in doleful dumps. The bill for one hundred and twenty pounds, which bore the joint signatures of himself and his uncle, had fallen due, and the sum total which the pair of them could scrape together towards meeting it did not amount to much over thirty pounds. To make matters worse for the younger man, for the last few days Captain Verinder had been missing both from his lodgings and his usual haunts, nor did anyone seem to know what had become of him. But pity in such cases is but cold comfort, and he did not content himself with that. Before parting from Luigi he put into his hand a cheque for the full amount of the promissory note.

Everard Lisle’s capital did not amount to much more than three hundred pounds in all, and was made up of a small legacy bequeathed him by a relative, supplemented by his own savings, for he had no extravagances and was of a thrifty disposition. To finish with this incident, it may be recorded that about a fortnight later John Clare asked Everard to be the bearer of a cheque for a hundred and twenty pounds from him to Luigi Rispani. He had been reading over for the second time the notes of the interview between Luigi and Sir Gilbert, after the former’s release from the strong room, as transcribed by Everard from his shorthand memoranda, after which he had gone to his father and made certain representations to him, the outcome of which was the cheque in question.

Great was John Clare’s surprise when told that the promissory note had already been met and by whom. He made no attempt to press the cheque on Everard, but quietly put it back into his pocket. He would not spoil the aroma of a fine action by bringing it down to a cash level.

To return.

When Everard got back from London, bringing with him Mrs. Clare’s address, he found that in the course of the afternoon Mrs. Forester had driven over from the Shrublands—the house at which Lady Pell had been visiting previous to coming to the Chase—and had insisted upon carrying Lady Pell and Miss Thursby back with her, with the understanding that they were not to return to Withington till the morrow.

Although he had not seen Ethel for a week, not since he had parted from her before setting out on that journey to America which had been stopped short at Liverpool, it was yet a secret relief to him to learn that, at the earliest, they could not meet for another day. And in twenty-four hours much might happen.

Everard Lisle was too clear-sighted not to perceive in what direction, when duly sifted, the evidence bearing on Ethel’s parentage, which he had been enabled to bring together, all tended. As yet there was one big gap which required to be filled up, but it might well be that Mr. John Clare’s investigations on the morrow would prove successful in bridging over the hiatus, or, in other words, in forging the last link in a chain of evidence which would then be complete and perfect in every part. Well, and what then? he asked himself. Should the foreshadowed end come to pass, ought he to be anything but glad, jubilant, happy? Certainly he ought to be all that and more, because in that case into his darling’s life there would come a happiness greater and richer than her dreams had ever pictured.

And yet!—and yet!—There are two sides to every question, and when Everard thought of the other side to this one his heart grew faint within him. “I trust that I shall at least know how to do my duty,” he said to himself with proud bitterness.