The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

“He seems to me a rather clever young man.”

“Oh yes, he’s clever enough in his way,” said the Captain with a short laugh. “The question is whether he’s not a little bit too clever. There lies our danger.”

This was rather beyond Giovanna; but, as their fly drew up next minute at the station, nothing more was said; and as there were several other passengers in the compartment by which they travelled up to town, all further private conversation was deferred till they reached Giovanna’s rooms, where they found Luigi impatiently awaiting their arrival.

The young Italian was a rank coward both morally and physically, and when told that he would have to face Sir Gilbert Clare on the morrow in his assumed rôle of grandson to the baronet, his cheeks blanched and a nervous trembling took possession of him, which was not allayed till the Captain had administered to him a tolerably stiff dose of brandy.

As already stated, Luigi was a fairly good-looking young man. He was tall and slender, with a pale olive complexion and clear cut features of an almost purely Greek type. His eyes were large, black and expressive, and the knowledge of how to make the most of them had come to him by intuition, as it does to the majority of his race. Jet black, soft and silky were his hair and moustache. He was very proud of his long tapering hands, and his carefully trimmed nails. Some of his friends said they were the hands of an artist, others, less complimentary, averred that he had the digits of a pickpocket. Both statements went beyond the mark, as the generality of extreme statements do, for although Luigi Rispani was a fairly clever drawing-master, he was entirely lacking in the creative faculty, and although he had no moral scruples whatever in lending himself to a scheme for defrauding Sir Gilbert Clare, nothing less than hard compulsion—a twinge of starvation, for instance—would have induced him to insert his hand into another man’s pocket and abstract therefrom a watch or purse. In the opinion of some people a transaction of the latter kind would have been much more venial than the one to which he had given his assent, but such was not Luigi Rispani’s way of thinking, and such is not the way of thinking of thousands of others.

Our three conspirators did not separate till a late hour, for, on the strength of his coming good fortune, Luigi had already thrown up his post at the theatre. As a matter of course, the Captain was spokesman-in-chief. He it was who thought out every detail and strove to foresee and provide against every contingency which might unexpectedly crop up at the morrow’s interview. The others had little to do beyond listening and assenting and trying to fix in their memory, so that they might be available at the right moment, the different points enumerated by him.

In matters of business Captain Verinder was punctuality itself, and our little party of three pulled up at the door of Withington Chase as the turret clock was striking eleven. Having been ushered into the morning room as before, they were left to themselves for a few minutes. Then the footman reappeared with a request that “the lady and the young gentleman” would be good enough to follow him. Before quitting the room he rather ostentatiously placed a couple of newspapers on the centre table.

Captain Verinder was left alone; he realised the fact unpleasantly. Starting to his feet, he began to pace the room with anything but placid strides. His face turned a purplish red, he shook his clenched hands at an imaginary foe, and anathematised Sir Gilbert in tones not loud but deep. He was quite aware that the baronet had conceived an unaccountable dislike for him, but he had not thought it would take a form of such active hostility as had now evinced itself. It was more than a slight—it was an insult—as he fumingly told himself: but all the same, it was one which he was not in a position to resent.

After all, as he assured himself when he had in some measure calmed down, it was really a matter of little moment, even if Sir Gilbert should continue to ignore him; he might feel sore at the time, but he would soon get over that. The great point was that the scheme he had so carefully elaborated was on the high road to success; the rest, as far as he was concerned, was a trifling matter indeed. Let but Luigi and Vanna attain to the positions he had designated them for, and henceforth with him—Augustus Verinder—all would go well. Farewell, then, to his existence of semi-genteel pauperism, and to his long struggle against a fate which had so persistently turned a cold shoulder to him, and would have none of his wooing! For the rest of his days he would be able to live as a gentleman ought to live.

On leaving the morning-room, Giovanna and Luigi were conducted to the library, where they found Sir Gilbert awaiting them. The baronet received them with that frigid ceremoniousness to which Giovanna was becoming accustomed by this time, but which did not tend to put Luigi more at his ease. But the mere fact of Sir Gilbert betraying no outward signs of perturbation afforded no gauge by which to measure the depth of the emotions at work below. All his life it had been natural to him to mask his feelings, and at his age it was not to be expected that he should alter. In reality, he was profoundly moved—a fact which increased, rather than diminished, the ingrained austerity of his manner, and deepened the vertical line between his shaggy eyebrows.