A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Volume 3

He knocked a prolonged and thundering knock at the door, such as had probably never before been sounded upon it, and which was evidently intended to impress us all with a sense of the extreme importance and urgency of our visitor, and I heard him inquire of Susan, when she opened the door, in a tone of the most dignified condescension, "If Miss Ashleigh were at home?" Finding that she was, he returned, opened the carriage door and let down the steps, and Ada got out and came up to the door, and in another minute she was in my arms.

It was some time before we were composed enough to talk at all. It was so long since we had met – nearly five years now – at the time when Percy came down with her to Canterbury, when I became engaged to him. How much had happened since then! how many changes! it seemed an age to look back upon, and a very sad age too. Ada was naturally the first to recover herself, and as soon as she saw that I could listen to her, she began to scold me for being six weeks so near London without writing to let her know, and said that she had felt so indignant, when she first received my letter, that she had a great mind not to come down at all. I excused myself as well as I could, and told her frankly that I had been influenced by three reasons – the first, that from the time when we came up we had been so occupied in seeing about the furniture of our new house, that we had been busy from morning till night; the second, that owing to the same cause, both we and the house had been in such a state of confusion that we were not fit to receive visitors, and that I preferred her seeing the place when it was clean and tidy; and lastly, that I really had hardly felt equal to seeing her, and having so many sad memories called up. Ada still scolded me a little, and then, finding that I had now recovered myself, said: —

"There, Agnes, I will forgive you; and now let me look fairly at you: turn to the light. Really, I do not think you look a year older."

"Nonsense, Ada, I know I am looking older; I do not care for myself, but I only hope Percy will not think me looking dreadfully old when he comes back."

"If he does, Agnes, I will have nothing to say to him. Let me see, he has been gone now nearly four years, – four more, darling! it seems a long time to wait, but still it is something that half has gone, and what a happiness it is that his regiment was not out in that dreadful Crimea. And now, how am I looking, Agnes?"

"A little changed, Ada. You see I speak the truth. You were, like myself, nearly eighteen then; you are twenty-three now. Older, and a little more matronly-looking, for you were a girl then; you are a woman now, but certainly not less beautiful; indeed, I think more so, for your face has a calmer and brighter expression than it had."

I was not flattering her, for as I looked at her I thought I had never seen such a lovely woman in my life. Ada laughed and coloured a little, and declared I was an old goose; and then I said: —

"And now for a very important question, Ada; how is baby?"

"Very well, Agnes; he is six months old now, getting quite a big, troublesome boy. Ah, here is Polly!"

For Polly, always thoughtful, had remained out of the room, to let Ada and me have our first meeting, after so long a separation, together alone. It was only a year since they had met, and I was pleased to see by her manner how fond Ada was of her; as in the event of my going to India with Percy, her friendship would be very valuable to Polly.

"And is that your carriage, Ada?" I asked.

"Dear me, no," Ada said, "my equipage is a simple brougham. But I was in at the Square this morning with Holmeskirk, and I said I was coming down to see you; so the countess – who has a very high opinion of you, my dear, and who constantly inquires after you, especially as she knows, of course, how you stand with Percy – insisted on my taking her carriage and leaving her card. She sent her love, and she hopes that you and Polly will call upon her when you come over to see me; and I can assure you, Agnes, the dear old lady meant it. And now what day will you come? I will send my brougham down any day you like to name, that is if you will let me first see what days I am disengaged."

Ada thereupon took out her tablets, and found she was engaged for every day except Friday.

"Now, Agnes, I want you and Polly to come early to lunch. Then we will have the countess's carriage – she is a great invalid now, and she likes my using her carriage, – and we will have a drive in the park, and then a long cosy talk till dinner, at seven. And I want your brother to come to dinner, and then the brougham shall bring you back. Holmeskirk would have called himself; but your letter said that your brother always went out early, so he knew he had no chance of finding him in; but he asked me to leave his card."

After a little consultation with Polly, I accepted the invitation as far as the going up to dinner was concerned, but solely on condition that we came up in our own way. Ada inquired what was our own way, and I said that we should send up a box by the Parcels' Delivery with the things we required for dinner, and that we ourselves should come up by an omnibus to Sloane Street; that we would walk from there to her ladyship's, and that we should have a fly to fetch us at night. And so it was agreed; and Ada sat and talked for more than an hour, and then got up to go. We went down the garden with her, and she stopped at the gate to kiss us again before she got in; to, I have no doubt, the intense astonishment of the powdered footman, who was holding the carriage-door open, and who must have suffered the more that his position prevented him expressing his feelings, except by assuming an expression of even more stony impassiveness than before; for I have no doubt that before he saw this mark of affection and familiarity, he had the impression that Viscountess Holmeskirk had come down to pay a visit to some old nurse or domestic whom she had known in childhood.

When Harry came home, I told him of the engagement we had made for him, and he pished and grumbled, and said at first that he would not go; but, as I pointed out, there was no possible excuse for his not doing so, and indeed that it would be of no use, for Ada had particularly begged me, should Harry say he was engaged for that day, to write at once and let her know, and she would change the day for one in the following week. So Harry had to give in, and on the day of our engagement arranged to dress in town, and come straight down, for he was busy just then, and could not get away till six o'clock. Polly and I got to Ada's house, which was in Wilton Crescent, at one o'clock. Lord Holmeskirk was at home, and renewed his acquaintance with me with the frank heartiness which was natural to him.

After lunch Ada took us up to the nursery to see baby, and after we had sufficiently admired him – and he was really a fine little fellow – we put on our things and went for a drive with her in the park in the Countess of Rochester's carriage. On our return we went in with Ada to call on the countess herself, who lived in Belgrave Square, and who was very kind in her manner and remarks. She was evidently very fond of Ada, and not a little proud of her beautiful daughter-in-law; and I could see that Ada, on her part, was very attached to the kind old lady, whom she treated with a deference which I had certainly never seen her exhibit for her own imperious mother.

After we got back to Ada's we took off our things, and sat down for a long, cozy chat about the past. I found she was very happy in her married life, and that her husband was all she could possibly wish him. I certainly thought that her happiness had improved her; for, although quite as cheerful as of old, she had a quiet dignity which very much became her. She said that she hoped, when we were able to enter into gaiety again, that we would let her take us with her into society.

For myself I declined at once, and I am glad that Polly did the same. I told her we moved in a sphere as far removed from the one in which she did, as the sun was from the earth, and that I was sure it was a great mistake, as my own example might prove, to go out of it. "It is pleasant for a time, Ada," I said, "but it is a bitter fruit; no good can come of it. When Percy comes home, if we are married, and if Polly is still single, it will be a different thing; but at present Daisy Villa has nothing in common, except our affection, with Wilton Crescent and Belgrave Square. We shall be very glad to come over sometimes to see you quietly, and for you to drive over to see us when you can spare time from your gaieties, but beyond that, as long as I am Miss Ashleigh, nothing." Ada tried hard to shake my resolution, but in vain, and Polly was equally firm with myself.

Harry came to dinner, and Ada made him feel perfectly at home. Certainly prosperity had not spoiled her; she was just as frank and as friendly as when she had been staying with us as a girl at Canterbury; she introduced him to Lord Holmeskirk with a laughing remark, that Harry had at one time very nearly prevented her from ever occupying the position she now so unworthily filled, by making the most desperate love to her when she was only sixteen years old. Lord Holmeskirk laughed, and said, that in that case he was very greatly Harry's debtor in that he had not succeeded in his attempt upon Ada's affections.

Harry and Lord Holmeskirk were soon on very friendly terms. They suited each other well. They had moved certainly in very different circles, and had seen very different sides of life; but they were of the same happy disposition; both in their way singularly straightforward men, and both gifted with the same honest determination to see only the best side of things.

Our little dinner-party went off very pleasantly; and I felt quite relieved to find that when we were helped, the servants left the room; and Ada then told us that she had suffered so much as a girl from the stony presence behind her mother's chair, that she had always determined, if she were at the head of a house of her own, never to have a servant in the room one moment longer than necessary.

After dessert was over, Ada and we went up to the nursery, leaving the gentlemen over their wine, and I believe they would have sat and talked there all night if Ada had not at last sent them message after message to say that tea was ready upstairs. Soon after they came up our fly arrived, and we went home very much pleased with our evening.

After that Harry never raised any objection to going to dine at Wilton Crescent, which we afterwards did every month or so when Ada was in town. Polly and I used to lunch with her once a fortnight, and the coronetted carriage was very often down at Daisy Villa, where it never ceased to be an object of wonder and admiration to the small children of the neighbourhood, and I have no doubt gave us great standing and dignity in the eyes of the inhabitants of the other five villas. I really believe we never ceased to be subjects for wonder and speculation to the countess's powdered footman, who knowing that Lord Holmeskirk had married the daughter of the fashionable Lady Desborough, could never form any hypothesis perfectly satisfactory to himself as to how she could possibly come to be familiar with people living in such a small, and exceedingly unfashionable domicile as No. 1, Daisy Villas, Charlemagne Road, Putney.

CHAPTER III

A STRANGE PROFESSION

A very touching picture Sophy Gregory presented as she sat in the little parlour at work, a week after Dr. Ashleigh's visit; in her mourning dress, and with the tiny fatherless child in her lap. She was very pale, and looked years older than she was. Sophy had gone through a heavy trial. She had loved her husband very truly; not indeed with the same admiring affection she had felt for him when they met in the plantations of Harmer Place – that dream had been dispelled rudely enough long ago, – but she had loved him as a true woman, knowing his faults, and bearing with them, taking them indeed as a special and deserved punishment upon herself for her fault in marrying him as she had done; but yet loving him the more, in that she saw how hard he tried, in spite of his faults, to make her happy. For this she had thanked God, and had prayed very earnestly that some day it might be granted to her, that through her influence over him, and his love for her, he might yet turn out nearly such a man as, in her early days of love, she had fancied him to be. But now all those pictures which she had been so fondly painting of their life in a distant land, had suddenly faded away; those bright pictures which had been ever before her eyes, as she sat at her work through the day, or of an evening, with Robert sitting moodily drinking beside her; fair, happy pictures of their future life, in a rude hut in some lonely clearing, far away from the nearest neighbours; she, engaged in her household work, listening to the ring of Robert's axe, till the hour should come for him to return from his labour, tired, but cheery and bright, to spend the evening with her happily without that dreadful bottle; contented with her fond welcome, sitting by the log fire-side, perhaps with his children climbing on his knee, or standing by while he told them stories, or taught them their first simple lessons, while she sat by busy at her work watching them fondly. At the thought of these, or some such fancies, Sophy's face had brightened often, and, trusting in the future, she had almost forgotten the present, and once again admired as well as loved her husband, not for what he was, but for what he would some day become. But now all these pictures were gone, blotted out in a moment by the rude hand of death, – and of such a death! If he had died as most men die, tranquilly and peacefully, with his last words breathed in her ears, his last look fixed upon herself, Sophy thought she could have borne it with resignation; but to die such a death as this, to be shot down in his strength, to go out full of health and spirits, and never to return; and for her only to be told that he lay in an obscure grave in a distant town! this she could hardly bear; and as she looked with a blank hopeless look into the fire, she thought that were it not for the unconscious babe on her knees, she would gladly – oh, how gladly! – go where there is no more weeping and tears. But for the child's sake she must live and work; for that child who, if he had his rights, would be heir to wealth and fortune – to that very home where his father had been shot down like a common robber, by the woman who had defrauded him of his rights. Sophy did not know all the history of that night's work, only what Dr. Ashleigh had told her; that Robert had gone with the intention of alarming Miss Harmer into divulging where the will was hidden. Angela Harmer's death she regarded as an unfortunate effect of the fright, which could not have been foreseen; of the violence used towards her she was of course ignorant.

Was not Robert, she asked herself, right in what he did? Was he not in his own house, seeking his own for her sake and the child's. Should all this go for ever unpunished? Should this woman who had robbed her and her child, who had now slain her husband, who had, as Dr. Ashleigh had told her, destroyed his daughter's happiness, and brought her to the verge of the grave; should she prosper and triumph? No, a thousand times no; and day after day Sophy's determination became more and more deeply rooted, her purpose more strongly confirmed. Should it cost her her life as it had done Robert's, she would yet find the will. But how? And she brooded over the thought till her brain seemed on fire; she fell into reveries from which nothing except the crying of her child could rouse her; her eyes began to have a dreamy, far-off look, and had there not been anything to rouse and occupy her, it is probable that her reason would have given way entirely under the strain of this fixed idea upon her mind. Upon this day, however, there was a knock at the door, and a little talking in the passage, and then Mrs. Billow, who had been as kind as a mother to Sophy during this period, came into the room.

"Mr. Fielding wishes to speak to you, my dear; he has been here three or four times to ask after you, and I do think you had better see him."

Sophy looked up at her as she spoke, but it was evident that she did not hear what was said to her; her thoughts were too far away to be called back all at once.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Billow," she said presently, with an effort, "what are you saying?" Mrs. Billow repeated her message.

"Do see him, my dear," she went on as Sophy shook her head, "It will do you good; you are fretting yourself to death. Indeed, indeed, my dear, you are, and it is very wrong of you; what is to become of your little baby if you get ill, as I am sure you will, if you sit here think, think, all day, without speaking a word to any one? Do see him, now there's a deary, it will do you good, indeed it will."

Sophy paused a little, and then said in a weary tone, "Very well, Mrs. Billow, if it will please you, I will see him."

Mr. Fielding was shown in. He was a rough man, and, to a certain extent, an unprincipled one; but he had been a gentleman once, and could be one still when he chose, and his heart was, after all, not far from its right place.

"Mrs. Gregory," he said, as he came in, "I will not pain you by offering you my condolences, or by telling you how I feel for you in your affliction. Please to consider all that as said, and to take this visit as one simply of business. When I called the day before yesterday, I took the liberty of asking your landlady what you were thinking of doing. She told me that from what you said she believed that you intended teaching again. Now will you excuse me if I say, that although, under other circumstances, such a plan might have its advantages, yet that I think, that with a young baby, whom you would be obliged to leave without you the whole day, it would be attended by great inconveniences. Besides, there is no occasion why you should do so. My proposition is, that you should continue to do as you have hitherto done. I can leave the papers, letters, and such information as you require, here of a day, without coming in to disturb you. If I were to see you, say once a week at present, while it is the slack time, it would, I should think, be sufficient. By the time the busy season comes on, you will, I hope, be so far recovered as to be able to see me for half an hour or so every day. Of course, the remuneration will be the same as it has been up to this time. I do not think you could earn more at your teaching, and you will be able to have baby with you all day. There is another thing I should wish to say. It was through – through my late partner's capital and assistance, that we managed to do as well as we did, and it has laid the foundation for a first-rate business this year. There is at present £150 only in the bank, half of which is your property. Should you choose to let that remain in the business, I will give you, as I think would be fair, an interest in it – say one-fifth of the profits at the end of the year."

"But I have no right to that, have I, Mr. Fielding? For I know that I heard Robert say that any man would be ready to put £1,000 into the business for a third of the profits."

"That is right enough, Mrs. Gregory, and I do not disguise from you that the fifth of the business is worth a great deal more than £75, even for a sleeping partner; but that is not the question: it is not for the money, but for your interest and partnership, as it were, that I think it fair that you should still have a share in it."

"But I have no absolute right to any share, Mr. Fielding?"

"Well, not actually a right, Mrs. Gregory. You see we never drew up any deed of partnership when we began; but it was, of course, an understood thing that if anything should happen to either of us that his representatives should have some sort of interest or pull out of the affair."

"And about the writing, Mr. Fielding? Are you sure that my work is worth what you pay me?"

"Quite sure," he said, in a far less hesitating and undecided way than he had before spoken in. "I can assure you that I could not get any one on whom I could rely to do the work for less money, and that I should be very sorry for any one else to know all my affairs as you do."

"Then in that case I accept with many thanks," Sophy said, gratefully; "and I feel that you are acting with great kindness, for the £75 is no equivalent for my share of the profits. You have, indeed, taken a great weight off my mind, for I have been very troubled, wondering what I should do with baby while I was out."

"That is settled, then," Mr. Fielding said, cheerfully, as if greatly relieved that the matter had been so arranged. "I will send you the papers and letters to-morrow, when the post comes in. I can assure you it will be quite a relief to me; for although work is slack now, I have got into such a muddle that I hardly know which letters I have answered and which I have not. I have all this week's lot here." And he took a large bundle of letters from his pocket. "I believe I have answered all the others, but I have not touched one of these. I will leave them with you to clear up. And now, good bye. I will call again this day week."

And so Sophy, very joyful that she should be always with her baby, again set to at her old work of making out lists, and answering correspondents, and sending out the names of winning horses; and busied in these pursuits, and in the nursing and fondling of baby, her thoughts ceased to dwell on her project for the recovery of the will, and her eyes recovered their former expression. Not that she had given up her idea, but she had postponed it for a fitting season; the only step she took towards it being to write to her foster-mother, the woman who had brought her up, to ask her to send an account of Miss Harmer's state of health every three months, and to let her know at once if she should be taken ill.

As time went on, the first faint gleams of consciousness came into baby's eyes, and then it came to know her, and to hold out its arms, and struggle and cry to come to her, and Sophy began to feel that life might have some happiness for her yet, for she had something to love and work for, something which loved her in return.

And so a year passed, and now the little child was able just to toddle across the room, to Sophy's delight and terror, and to call her "mammy," and to utter other sounds, perfectly unintelligible to any one, but which she persisted was talking; and Sophy was able to toss him and play with him almost as gleefully as she would have done years before. She looked far younger than she had done eighteen months back, for she had now no care on her mind. Sometimes, indeed, of an evening, when her work was all done, and the child in bed, she would sit by the hour musing over her plans for the recovery of the will; but her eyes had not the fixed, strange look they used to wear when thinking it over; for then she had thought of it as a duty, as a something which she had to do; but now that it was for her darling's sake, it was a pleasure; and her eyes would lighten as she thought over what she would do when she had succeeded, and she and her boy were rich.

She was comfortably off now; for the firm was doing well, and James Fielding was a member of Tattersall's and began to stand high in the ring. His drawings had risen from five pounds to ten pounds a week. He told Sophy so, and said that he considered this five pounds had been payment for his work, in the same way that her two pounds was of hers, but this additional five pounds he looked upon as a weekly division of profits, and consequently she was entitled to another one pound a week also. So she had now three pounds a week and was very comfortable. At the end of the season he showed her his banker's book, and there was nearly £2,000 standing to his credit; and he said that next year, having so good a capital, he should be able to bet more heavily, and had no question that he should do much better.

All through that winter although business was very slack, and there was no occasion for his so doing, James Fielding used to come over three times a week to see her. And indeed all along his kindness had been very great, sending her little presents of game and poultry, and bringing baskets of choice fruit from Covent Garden.

It was not for a year after Robert Gregory's death that Sophy thought anything of all this. James Fielding had been very kind to her, and she had learned to think of him as a true friend; but absorbed as she was in her child, and with her spare thoughts so fixed on that other purpose of hers, she had never thought more on the subject. At length one day, something he said, some tone of his voice came upon her like a revelation. She started, looked hurriedly and anxiously at him and saw that it was indeed so. With an exclamation almost of pain she rose —

"James Fielding," she said, "don't say it to me. Never think of it again. Do not take away the last friend I have in the world from me. You are the only one I have to rely upon, do not make it impossible for me ever to receive a kindness from you again. I shall never marry again; do not, do not speak of it."