The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

The hot colour mounted to Mr. Keymer’s face as he read the concluding lines of Ethel’s epistle. He had always regarded himself as a man of honour and of the strictest integrity in his dealings with others, as one careful never to overpass that thin line which in but too many instances is all that divides trade morality from that other commodity, often hardly to be distinguished from it, of which the law takes cognisance; but there was that in some of Miss Thursby’s phrases which stung him to the quick, not merely on Launce’s account, but on his own. When, acting on the information imparted to him that the Miss Thursbys had willed all they possessed to their niece, he had urged his son to endeavour to secure the heiress for his wife; and when, on its being subsequently shown that she was an heiress no longer, he had given a helping hand in the rupture of the engagement—it had seemed to him that he had only acted as any sensible man of the world, who had his son’s welfare at heart, would have acted. All at once, however, a fresh and entirely different light had been thrown on his action in the affair, and, for the first time, he seemed to see it in its true colours and to recognise it for the despicable and dishonourable piece of business it really was. The brewer was not used to blushing for himself, or his actions, and the sensation was by no means a pleasant one.

But before long all such unpleasant personal considerations became, to a great extent, merged in a feeling of annoyed wonder, originating in certain statements in the letter which seemed clearly to implicate his son in some more or less discreditable transactions with some other female, of which he, his father, knew absolutely nothing. Of what folly had Launce been guilty?

Without more ado he at once despatched a brief telegram to his son, who was still sojourning with his uncle in Cornwall: “Return by first train without fail.”

Indeed, now that Miss Thursby had rejected Launce of her own accord, there was no valid reason why he should not at once come back home. The engagement had never been made public; neither Miss Thursby nor her aunts would, for their own sakes, care to speak of it, and the whole episode might be regarded as over and done with by all concerned. In so far Miss Thursby’s stinging epistle had served to put an end to a state of affairs the climax of which, in any case, could hardly have been devoid of unpleasant features of some kind.

Launce Keymer did not reach home till the afternoon of next day He had been away on a fishing expedition when the telegram arrived and, as a consequence, had missed the last through train to London. He had not found the journey a pleasant one, his father’s curt telegram having served to utterly unnerve him. What had happened to cause him to be so peremptorily summoned?

Launce took a cab at the station and drove straight to his father’s office. The brewer was alone.

“Anything the matter, dad? All well at home, I hope?” queried Launce as he extended a hand which his father made believe not to see.

“There’s a great deal the matter; more, perhaps, than you will find it easy to explain away,” responded the brewer gruffly. “Take that chair and read this.” As he spoke he took Ethel’s letter from under a paperweight at his elbow and tossed it across the table to his son.

Launce read it to the end without a word. When he had done, he refolded it slowly, and then lifted his eyes and looked at his father, who was grimly watching him.

“Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself?” demanded the latter.