The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

Although Miss Matilda had advised Ethel to go and lie down awhile, the latter had no inclination for anything of the sort. Instead, she went in search of Tamsin, and found her in her own room, an apartment situated between the dressing-rooms of the sisters, and having a door which opened into each of them. Tamsin had been on board the Pandora, when Ethel’s supposed mother had lost her life, and had a knowledge of all the events connected with that far-off time. Ethel could talk to her and question her, as she could not talk to or question her “aunts,” and there were half-a-score things she was burning to hear about.

Tamsin was sitting in her favourite spot, on the broad, low, cushioned window-seat of her room. She was crooning to herself one of the quaint hymns she had learnt at her mother’s knee half a century before. She had a short, rather dumpy figure, and very homely features. Her eyes were at once shrewd and good-humoured, and she had a very pleasant smile. Her still plentiful grey hair was crowned by a plain net cap, with goffered frills, bound over the crown of the head with a broad black ribbon. In age she was some three or four years older than her mistresses, whose service she had entered soon after they left school, and with whom she had remained ever since. Tamsin was famed for her skill as a needlewoman, and this afternoon she was engaged on some fine sewing, which it was her pride to be still able to see to do without the aid of spectacles.

Ethel burst into the room, and before Tamsin knew what had happened, she found herself being violently hugged.

“I know all!” exclaimed the girl. Next moment she corrected herself. “No, not quite all, but much—a great deal. I have just been reading Uncle Matthew’s letter, written a little while before he died, with directions that it should be opened by me on my nineteenth birthday. And to think that you—you dear, but artful old thing—have known all these years everything there is in the letter, and yet have never breathed the least hint that I was somebody altogether different from the Ethel Thursby I have always believed myself to be!”

“The secret was not mine, dearie,” replied Tamsin, as she pulled her cap into shape. “What would my mistresses have thought, if by as much as a single word, I had betrayed their trust in me? No, no, it was far better for you in every way, that you should be told nothing about these things till you were grown up. You would only have kept on bothering your child’s brain to no good purpose.”

“But, oh! Tamsin, to think that my aunts are not my aunts, and that I have no more right to bear their name than the veriest beggar that walks the streets!” There was that in her voice which told the elder woman that her tears were very close to the surface.

“Listen, honey,” said Tamsin, as she stroked the girl’s brown hair fondly. And thereupon, only in different words, and homelier phraseology, she proceeded to state the case to almost the same effect that it had been stated by Miss Matilda already. The mere fact that a certain piece of information, hitherto, for wise reasons, kept from her, had been told her to-day, did not and could not in the remotest degree affect the relations which had existed for so long a time between herself and her supposed aunts. They had chosen to adopt her as their niece when she was an infant, and such she would continue to be to them so long as it should please Providence to leave unsevered the thread of their earthly existence. She, Ethel, must strive to forget that Miss Matilda and Miss Jane were not her aunts in reality, and must continue to regard them in precisely the same light that she had always done.

Ethel sat awhile in silence after Tamsin had finished speaking. Then she said: “Just now it all seems so strange and incredible to me, that I find it almost as hard to believe as I should one of the fairy tales I used to read when a girl. In time, no doubt, I shall get used to it, so that it will seem as if I must have known of it all along; but that will not be to-day, nor to-morrow.” A sigh broke from her. She sat staring out of the window without seeing anything of that which her eyes rested upon.

Presently she resumed: “But now that I have been told so much, I want to know more. There are several questions, Tamsin, which I do not care to ask my aunts, but which I don’t in the least mind asking you.”

Tamsin screwed up her mouth, but said nothing. It altogether depended on the nature of the girl’s questions whether they would be answered by her or no.